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After reaching the two poles in 1909 and 1911, Mt Everest in 1953 and the Seven Summits in 1986. What else is there to explore, or to conquer?
After over 30 expeditions in 100 countries explorer Johan Ernst Nilson started to plan his biggest adventure ever; a unique journey still undone and one of the most difficult adventure projects ever attempted; Pole2Pole!
The expedition starts with skis on the North Pole on the exact date of Peary’s discovery, April 6, and will then reach Greenland two months later. From Greenland Johan and his team will then continue 1000 km with dogsled
over Greenland where they will sail across the Arctic Ocean into Canada. From Canada the journey continues with bike across North America and South America through jungles, deserts and mountains into Patagonia.
After six month on the bike Johan and his team will travel to the coldest place on Earth; Antarctica. Johan and his team will then ski and kite for two months across the continent until they reach the other side of the planet; the South Pole. The odyssey will take approximately one year to accomplish and will be done Climate Neutral.
The team will use skis, kites, doglsed, solarpower, bikes and a sailboat to be able to travel between the two poles. Any distance that can´t be done without engine will be climate compensated. Between the poles Johan and the Pole2Pole team will visit charity organizations to cover the important work the organizations do for our world.
The Pole2Pole Expedition is the one journey left undone… Follow the adventure!
Since the early 19:th century, explorers have been trying to reach the polar regions and the ends of the world; The North Pole in the Arctic and the South Pole in Antarctica.
Explorers like Shackelton, Amundsen, Cook, Peary and Nansen all had the same dream and many vanished in their fight against nature. The first expedition to cross the Antarctic Circle was run by Cook, who circumnavigated Antarctica in 1772-75 without actually sighting it.
The first person to claim to have reached the Geographic North Pole was Robert Peary on the 6th of April 1909 and the first person on the South Pole was Amundsen on December 14th, 1911. 1909-1911 were the most important years in polar history. Now 100 years has past and the most spectacular of all adventures is still to be done; the journey from the North Pole all the way down across the globe to the South Pole.
During the one year long journey between the two poles, Johan and his team will produce an international TV documentary and a photo book based on the polar regions.
Training for polar expeditions can only be made in the polar regions, so in May 2009 Johan brought training to the extremes by doing a polar expedition 1500 kilometers across Greenland.
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Main article: Fermín Tangüis
Fermín Tangüis poses with an example of the “Tangüis cotton”
In 1901, Peru’s cotton industry suffered because of a fungus plague caused by a plant disease known as “cotton wilt” (more correctly, “fusarium wilt”) caused by the fungus Fusarium vasinfectum. The plant disease, which spread throughout Peru, entered plant’s roots and worked its way up the stem until the plant was completely dried up. Fermín Tangüis, a Puerto Rican agriculturist who lived in Peru, studied some species of the plant that were affected by the disease to a lesser extent and experimented in germination with the seeds of various cotton plants. In 1911, after 10 years of experimenting and failures, Tangüis was able to develop a seed which produced a superior cotton plant resistant to the disease. The seeds produced a plant that had a 40% longer (between 29 mm and 33 mm) and thicker fiber that did not break easily and required little water. The Tangüis cotton, as it became known, is the variety which is preferred by the Peruvian national textile industry. It constituted 75% of all the Peruvian cotton production, both for domestic use and apparel exports. The Tangüis cotton crop was estimated at 225,000 bales that year.
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Journal Issue: Children with Disabilities Volume 22 Number 1 Spring 2012
This issue of The Future of Children explores childhood disability—its prevalence, nature, treatment, and consequences. With unprecedented numbers of U.S. children now being identified as having special medical and educational needs and with the nation's resources for addressing those needs increasingly constrained, the topic is timely.
Public discussion of childhood disability, by the media, parents, scholars, and advocates alike, tends to emphasize particular causes of disability, such as autism, asthma, cystic fibrosis, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this volume, however, we focus not on individual disabilities, but rather on cross-cutting themes that apply more broadly to the issue of children with disabilities.
To this end, we commissioned a group of experts to review research on childhood disability, including its definition (itself a challenge), its prevalence and trends over time (likewise), and the costs it imposes both on the individual child and on the child's family. Our contributors also consider disability within the context of the nation's educational, health insurance, and medical systems; the impact of emerging technologies on the experience of disability; and the definition of health care quality. The volume concludes with a discussion of the prevention of childhood disability.
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4 Essential Sleep Habits for Kids
Healthy Kids from Teeth to Feet: Kids & Health
By Peg Rosen for Healthy Kids from Teeth to Feet
A good night’s sleep for grade-schoolers and teens means at least 10 hours of solid shut-eye, according to the National Institutes of Health. For preschoolers, it’s 11-12 hours, and for babies it’s up to 18. But many kids are falling short … and paying the price.
New research from The University of Chicago suggests that youngsters who don’t get enough rest are more than four times as likely to be obese as their well-rested counterparts; sleep deprivation has been shown to disrupt levels of chemicals that regulate appetite. And Spanish researchers recently found that kids who don’t log an adequate amount of shut-eye are more likely to struggle in the classroom, where poor sleep habits hinder their motivation and compromise their ability to concentrate, memorize, write and spell.
One of the biggest sleep-snatchers is electronics, according to Timothy F. Hoban, director of pediatric sleep medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center. “Thirty years ago, there were no game systems, personal computers or mobile phones. This technology is now commonplace and often available in the child’s own room,” he says. But bad sleep habits are also to blame.
Here are Hoban’s top tips for getting your kids’ sleep situation under control:
has contributed to numerous magazines and websites, including Healthy Kids, MORE, Redbook, SELF, Real Simple, Parents, Family Circle, American Baby, ParentCenter.com and WebMD.com. She blogs at Relish-This.Blogspot.com.
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Quinceañera OverviewThe Quinceanera, or sweet fifteenth birthday is a very special day in the life of many Hispanic girls. Celebrated in Mexico, Puerto Rica, Cuba, Central and Southern America, many families of Hispanic heritage also observe Quinceaneras in the United States. And, while traditions vary according to family tradition, what remains at the heart of every fiesta Quinceanera is the celebration of a girl as she marks an important milestone: passing from childhood to adulthood.
Steeped in religion, for most Quinceaneras -- here and abroad -- their special fifteenth birthday starts with a religious ceremony (the misa de acción de gracias) and then followed by a reception at a family member’s home or special venue. At the mass, the Quinceanera is accompanied by up to fourteen maids (representing her fourteen years) and their fourteen escorts. Then, sat at the foot of the alter for the entire service, the mass gives the Quinceanera the opportunity to give thanks and lay flowers at the feet of the Virgin Mary. After the ceremony, female cousins and sisters distribute special favors to the congregation before the entire party heads off to celebrate with food, music and dancing.
At the heart of every Quinceanera’s fairytale day is a special dress. Traditionally an intricate design in bright or pastel colors, every Quinceanera spends a great deal of time and effort selecting the picture-perfect ball gown for her big day. In fact, with many dresses looking like elaborate wedding gowns themselves, a Quinceanera celebration can often seem like a dress rehearsal for a wedding! Yet, instead of affirming a commitment to a new husband, every Quinceanera reaffirms her devotion and commitment to her family. As for her footwear, most Quinceaneras start the day wearing flat shoes, symbolically switching them out for heels for the first dance with her father.
The original Quinceañera celebrations were important for ancient Aztecs and Mayans, dating back hundreds of years. As the tradition spread, Catholic Latinos added their own religious elements to the celebration. Many Quinceañeras celebrated in the US today begin with a special Thanksgiving Mass, known as La Misa de Acción de Gracias. The birthday girl is often given a seat of honor near the altar, and her Quinceañera court joins her. This court is similar to bridesmaids and groomsmen in a wedding, but the girls are called either “maids” or “dama”, and the boys are called “chamberlains” or “chambelán”. Usually there are seven maids, and seven chamberlains that serve as their escorts. The Quinceañera and her escort form the fifteenth couple.
Quinceañera Dress & Shoes
The traditional Quinceañera dress is either white or a light pastel color, like pale pink. They look similar to wedding gowns, but without the train that trails behind. The party decorations, cake, and favors should all coordinate with the color and design of the Quinceañera dress. The girl will arrive at her Quinceañera wearing flat shoes, which are ceremoniously exchanged for high feels. This symbolizes how she is taking her first steps as a woman, and leaving her children’s clothing and accessories behind. Usually her father assists with this ceremony, which is similar to when a father gives away his daughter at her wedding. Fathers are an important part of Quinceañera celebrations, as they are presenting their daughters as women for the first time.
The last doll is another tradition in the same style; it represents moving forward into adulthood. The Quinceañera is given a beautiful Quinceañera doll, which might be saved as a keepsake. The passing of the last doll is a custom wherein the Quinceañera gives the doll to a younger sister or cousin. This represents how she has put aside childish things, and is now a grown woman. Some Quinceañeras also feature a last piñata, where the young lady can enjoy this kid’s party game one last time. After these activities, there is a father-daughter dance that celebrates her coming of age. Traditional songs for the Quinceañera waltz include La Ultima Muñeca (The Last Doll), De Niña a Mujer (From a Girl to a Woman) and Vals de las Mariposas (Waltz of the Butterflies).
Gifts for the Quinceañera are an integral part of the festivities; each traditional Quinceañera gift has special symbolism for the young lady. Earrings are given to remind her to listen to God, and a bracelet or ring is gifted to represent the never-ending circle of life. Tiaras can represent the thorn of crowns worn by Jesus on the cross, or the mantle of responsibility that adults must shoulder. In some cases, the tiara represents one simple concept: the Quinceañera is queen for the day! Bibles and rosary prayer beads are also gifted as reminders to stay true to her faith despite the temptations that the adult world offers.
Learn more about the Fifteen Questions on the Quinceañera at the USCCB or get more general information about Quinceañera traditions on Wikipedia.
©2013 Provide Commerce, Inc. All rights reserved.
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PSC Provides Major Support for Unprecedented NOAA and University of Oklahoma Storm-Forecast Experiment
PSC improved performance of the forecast model, automated the daily runs and coordinated a dedicated high-bandwidth link.
PITTSBURGH, May 10, 2007 — Spring on the Great Plains brings one of nature's most awesome performances of fierce weather, as the May 5th weekend in Kansas tragically demonstrated. Many residents of Greensburg, Kansas credited the National Weather Service, which gave a half-hour advance warning, with preventing an even worse disaster. Nevertheless, tornados are notoriously hard to predict, and better warnings - hours in advance, instead of minutes, with greater reliability in the prediction - could save countless lives.
To that end, NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) this spring has mounted an unprecedented experiment in forecasting severe storms. To support it the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has brought to bear an awesome array of technology, its Cray XT3 - a lead system of the National Science Foundation (NSF) TeraGrid- and a dedicated high-bandwidth network link between Pittsburgh and Oklahoma contributed by Cisco Systems, Inc.
A major goal of the 2007 NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) Spring Experiment is to assess how well "ensemble" forecasting - a very computationally demanding approach - works to predict thunderstorms, including the "supercells" that spawn tornados. It is the first time ensemble forecasts, multiple runs of the same forecast model (to measure the uncertainty inherent in weather forecasts), are being carried out at the spatial resolution at which storms occur (finer than operational forecasts, thereby requiring more computing). It is also the first time ensemble forecasts are being carried out in real time in an operational forecast environment.
"Ensembles have been used extensively in larger-scale models," said Steven Weiss, Science and Operations Officer of the NOAA Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, Oklahoma. "But they have never before been used at the scale of storms. This is unique - both in terms of the forecast methodology and the enormous amount of computing. The technological logistics to make this happen are nothing short of amazing."
Collaborators in the experiment, in addition to PSC and SPC, are the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) at the University of Oklahoma, Norman; the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman; LEAD (Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery), an NSF Large Information Technology Research grant program and TeraGrid Science Gateway; and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Illinois, a lead TeraGrid resource provider.
To implement CAPS' daily forecast runs on PSC's Cray XT3 using the WRF (Weather Research and Forecast) model, PSC provided technological and staff assistance at several levels:
- PSC networking staff coordinated with OneNet, a regional network of the State of Oklahoma, and National Lambda Rail (NLR), a network initiative of U.S. universities, and with Cisco Systems, who contributed use of a dedicated "lambda" (a 10-gigabit-per-second optical-network) for up to a 12-month period.
- PSC implemented the lambda at its end in January, using existing equipment in the Pittsburgh metro and local-area network. The backbone is provided by NLR and OneNet provides the link from Tulsa to Norman, Oklahoma.
- This dedicated link - from the Cray XT3 to OneNet in Tulsa to a supercomputer at the University of Oklahoma (which ingests and post-processes the data) - makes possible the transfer of 2.6 terabytes of data per forecast day.
- PSC staff optimized the latest version of the WRF model to run on the Cray XT3, gaining a threefold speedup in input/output (I/O) of the WRF code, substantially improving overall performance.
- PSC also optimized the I/O for post-processing routines used to visualize and analyze the forecast output, achieving 100-fold speedup.
- PSC modified the reservation and job-processing logic of its job-scheduling software to implement auto-scheduling of WRF runs and related post-processing, 760 separate jobs each day, demonstrating the TeraGrid's ability to use the Cray XT3, a very large "capability" resource, on a scheduled, real-time basis.
The NOAA HWT spring experiment forecasts require more than a hundred times more computing daily than the most sophisticated National Weather Service operational forecasts. To meet this need, PSC's Cray XT3 (2,068 2.6 GHz dual-core processors, 21 teraflops peak) is the most powerful "tightly-coupled" system (designed to optimize inter-processor communication) available via the TeraGrid.
Each night, from April 15 until June 1, CAPS transmits weather data to the Cray XT3, which runs a 10-member ensemble (10 runs of the model) in addition to a single higher-resolution WRF run, in time to produce a forecast for the next day by morning. The forecast domain extends from the Rockies to the East coast, two-thirds of the continental United States. The ensemble runs are at four-kilometer horizontal resolution, with the single WRF forecast at two kilometers. A scientific objective is to assess the value of ensemble forecasts in relation to the higher-resolution forecast, and the XT3 and the high-bandwidth link to Oklahoma make it possible to do both of these demanding runs daily under real-time constraints.
Along with ensemble forecasts and use of the Cray XT3, the dedicated lambda is also unprecedented. "There's no other traffic on this lambda," said Wendy Huntoon, PSC director of networking. "This is probably the first time a lambda has been dedicated to a single research effort. All of us involved in this experiment are grateful to Cisco." Huntoon, who is also director of operations for NLR, helped to coordinate among OneNet, NLR and Cisco to implement the contributed lambda.
"The forecast runs at Pittsburgh ship terabytes of data back to Oklahoma every day," said Ming Xue, director of CAPS. "It wouldn't be possible without this network connection."
"This experiment represents an enormous leap forward," said University of Oklahoma meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, who directs LEAD and, as former director of CAPS, has led several spring forecasting experiments over the past decade. "Ensembles open up a new array of interpretative capabilities to forecasters analyzing how good the forecast is. With ensembles, you're not only forecasting the weather, you're forecasting the accuracy of the forecast."
Other parts of the experiment use capabilities developed by LEAD to test "on-demand" forecasts. These forecasts, run in response to continental U.S. forecasts that predict severe storms, are at fine spacing (two km) over smaller domains where initial forecasts indicate high storm likelihood. They use TeraGrid computing resources at NCSA.
Since the mid-90s, PSC has collaborated with CAPS and NOAA in spring experiments, and with steady advances in computational technology helped to achieve corresponding advances in the ability to predict storm-scale weather. In the last major experiment, during the 2005 season, using PSC's LeMieux, the first terascale system available via the TeraGrid, CAPS and NOAA learned that with sufficient high-resolution it's possible, in some cases, to predict the details of thunderstorms 24-hours in advance, a milestone in storm forecasting, suggesting that weather at this scale is inherently more predictable than previously thought.
Rolling Thunder Preview (Projects in Scientific Computing 2005)
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh together with Westinghouse Electric Company. Established in 1986, PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry, and is a partner in the National Science Foundation TeraGrid program.
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Understanding Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Hyperbaric Oxygenation; Hyperbaric Therapy; Hyperbaric Medicine; HBOT; HBO2
Pronounced: hi-purr-BEAR-ick ox-a-jen the-ra-pee
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a treatment in which a patient breaths 100% oxygen while in a hyperbaric chamber (pressure vessel) at a barometric pressure greater than sea level. The dosage of oxygen is increased proportional to the increase in chamber pressure; i.e. breathing 100% oxygen at 3 atmospheres absolute pressure is the equivalent of getting 300% oxygen. The air we breathe each day has 21% oxygen. Most chambers are capable of pressurizing to 1.5 to 3 times normal atmospheric pressure. The hyperbaric physician determines what pressure the chamber needs to go to for any given treatment. See conditions we treat.
There are two main types of hyperbaric chamber. Monoplace: single patient, chamber pressurized with 100% oxygen, patient directly breaths the ambient chamber oxygen. Some units offer intermittent air breaks. Multiplace: multiple patients, attendant(s) accompany patient, chamber pressurized with air, patient breaths 100% oxygen via a breathing circuit. Air breaks are done by removing patient from breathing circuit. P/SL has a multiplace chamber.
Reasons for Hyperbaric Therapy
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been used to treat many health problems, including:
- An air bubble (embolism) which gets into the circulatory system and blocks blood flow
- Decompression sickness, which can occur when divers or miners come to the surface too quickly
- Carbon monoxide poisoning
- Wound healing, especially in patients with poor circulation
- Radiation therapy injuries following treatment for cancer
- Skin grafts, flaps, or burns
What to Expect During Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Prior to Procedure
- Wear comfortable clothes.
- Bring a book or an activity that you can do in the chamber.
- You will be asked to change into hospital provided clothing.
- You will be seen by the technical, nursing and physician staff.
During Hyperbaric Treatment
Depending on your medical condition you will either sit or lie down. Along with the possibility of other patients in the chamber, you will always be accompanied by a hyperbaric staff person.
An outside technician will gradually pressurize the chamber. You will be able to talk to the inside attendant who will instruct you to:
- Relax and breathe normally.
- Follow ear equalization techniques reviewed with you prior to your first treatment. Swallow or blow with your nose pinched to relieve discomfort.
- If your ears don’t pop or you have discomfort, tell the attendant. They can lower the pressure, if needed, to help ear equalization.
After getting to the proper pressure, the attendant will connect a breathing circuit for you to receive your oxygen. The circuit will most likely be either a clear plastic hood or a mask. You will have 2-4 air breaks per treatment where the attendant will take off the breathing circuit for 5 minutes.
Immediately After Hyperbaric Therapy
Over a period of 15 minutes, the technician will slowly depressurize the hyperbaric chamber. You will likely
have some ear popping, but do not blow your nose. Most of the conditions treated require a five day a week
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Treatment Length
Most treatments last 2 hours
Average Hospital Stay
Unless you have another medical condition requiring you to stay in the hospital, hyperbaric oxygen therapy
is an outpatient therapy.
In most cases, there is no special care after hyperbaric treatment. Be sure to follow your doctor’s
Call Your Doctor
After you leave the hospital, contact your doctor if any of the following occurs:
- Discomfort or pain in your sinuses or ears
- Onset of seizures
- Vision problems
- Cough, shortness of breath, or chest pain
In case of an emergency, CALL 911.
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Rearing dairy replacements on the Atherton Tableland, Queensland. I. Effect of suckling system, bucket feeding and protein supplementation
Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
17(84) 25 - 30
Ninety-six calves, born between October 1973 and March 1974, were either bucket fed once daily on a commercial milk replacer, or multiple suckled at four calves cow-1 with either free or limited access (two calves in the morning and two in the afternoon). Bucket reared and limited access suckled calves were supplemented ad libitum with either maize or a 5:1 maize, bloodmeal mix. Free access suckled calves received ad libitum maize or were unsupplemented. Weaning was at 56 days of age. Growth rates of calves from birth to eight weeks were 0.36, 0.44 and 0.47 kg day-1 for the bucket fed, free access suckled and limited access suckled calves respectively. Major differences in growth rate occurred from birth to four weeks of age. Growth rate of calves with free access suckling from four to eight weeks of age was increased by maize supplementation (0.57 kg vs. 0.44 kg calf-1 day-1). No response to protein supplementation was measured. Incidence of scouring was higher in bucket reared calves (P < 0.01 ). The relevance of these results to the local dairy industry is discussed.
Full text doi:10.1071/EA9770025
© CSIRO 1977
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Photos of Radhanath Swami leading a Kirtan.
Kirtan is Sanskrit for “chant” or “glorify”—mainly, to glorify God and chant His names. God has many names—in many languages—which are all spiritual. “Spiritual” means God and His names are the same, so saying “Krishna” means Krishna is present. Kirtan is mantra meditation as song. The Sanskrit word man means mind, while tra means to free. Mantra meditation calms your mind of fear and anxiety, and opens your heart to reveal your spiritual nature of eternity and bliss.
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Taiwan opens up its public WiFi hotspots for tourism purposes
MANILA, Philippines - One of the problems with technological advances is that accessibility becomes a factor for enjoyment of new devices like tablets.
A new development at Georgia Tech, called Access4Kids, is working towards helping disabled children with controlling touch-based tablets.
Access4Kids aims to help those with fine-motor impairment to better control tablets. It is a "wireless input device that uses a sensor system to translate physical movements into fine-motor gestures to control a tablet."
The Access4Kids system uses 3 force-sensitive resistors to measure and convert pressure into control signals on a tablet.
As the news piece from Georgia Tech explains, "A child can wear the device around the forearm or place it on the arm of a wheelchair and hit the sensors or swipe across the sensors with his or her fist. The combination of sensor hits or swipes gets converted to different 'touch-based' commands on the tablet."
Its developers, professor Ayanna Howard and graduate student Hae Won Park, hope that Access4Kids can be fine-tuned and made into a commercial product.
As Howard explains, "It doesn’t make sense for me to have one child look at it and say ‘Hey that’s really cool’ and not have it out there in the world." - Rappler.com
Who will inherit the throne?
Rappler takes you through the Miss Philippines Earth 2013 competition with these specials:
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How-to: Add a DAC (digital to analog convertor) to your Pi
MCP4725 12-Bit DAC with Raspberry Pi
Add a DAC (digital to analog convertor) to your Raspberry Pi
We have a new tutorial - Already mastered Analog Inputs with the Pi, and looking for a new challenge? How about: How can I generate an analog output on the Pi?!
There are several ways you can accomplish this, but one of the easiest and most flexible is to use a dedicated IC called a Digital to Analog Convertor (or DAC). A DAC allows you to specify a numeric value (0..255 for an 8-bit DAC, 0..4095 for a 12-bit DAC, etc.), and the IC will output a voltage based on the supply voltage, and relative to that numeric value. For example, using a 12-bit DAC like the MCP4725 we'll be using here, setting the value to 2048 on a 3.3V system will results in ~1.65V output on the DAC.
This guide will show you everything you need to know to be able to generate precise analog outputs using your Pi and the MCP4725 12-Bit I2C DAC, from connecting everything up, to how to use our easy Python library.
http://learn.adafruit.com/mcp4725-12-bi ... spberry-pi
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A project of AMAZON INSTITUTE
The Amazon Institute is working diligently to preserve endangered species and battle deforestation in South America.
The natural world, in all its splendor and grace, is in critical condition due to species extinction and endangerment and the destruction of natural habitat through deforestation. However, it does NOT have to be this way. Becoming aware of these problems is the first step to fixing them.
The 3-toed Sloth is a very interesting animal with a number of unique adaptations for survival. For example, its fur has formed a beautiful symbiotic relationship with cyanobacteria(algae), making the actual fur of the sloth an independent ecosystem. Because the algae is green it makes the sloths fur appear green and brown, helping the animal to better blend in with its arboreal surroundings. Equally as unique as the sloths fur are its teeth. The teeth of the sloth grow continuously, throughout its 40 to 50 year life. Sloths are also very adequate swimmers, despite their predominately tree-branch existence. As you can see, there is much for us to learn from this amazing creature, but if we are not diligently protecting it from the threat of human hands we could miss out on a lot of valuable knowledge and experience.
We encourage everyone to take notice of the challenges presented to this creature and its habitat, and to take responsibility for the world we share with so many different creatures, like the 3-toed Sloth. No matter how small or quiet, every plant and animal plays a crucial role in all of our lives, just as we do in theirs. Many people neglect the impact we have on our plant and the creatures that inhabit it and that is why foundations like The Amazon Institute exist. By helping us to realize how drastically we can change things for the better and by providing us with the tools to do so, we can swiftly, make it happen.
We believe that having the ability to make a change means having the responsibility to make a change. Why not make it a good change? Visit The Amazon Institute and do your part.
Adopt a 3-toed Sloth or Plant a Tree, or BOTH!
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Zingiberaceae is a family of 51 genera and c. 1200 species which are related to bananas, bird-of-paradise flowers and Canna lilies. They are found in all tropical forests but most occur between India and New Guinea.
Ginger, turmeric and cardamom are the most important economic species being grown in great quantities for international trade.
M.F. Newman now leads research on the gingers at the RBG but former colleagues first started to study the Zingiberaceae in the early 1960s when B.L. Burtt and P.J.M. Woods brought back material from Sarawak. Later R.M. Smith worked on this family until her retirement in 1993, producing accounts for Borneo, Australia and Bhutan as well as a new infrageneric classification of the largest genus Alpinia.
This is a searchable data base for taxonomists which has been built up at the RBGE with help from staff of Singapore Botanic Gardens. It contains information about scientific names and their type specimens, and also about herbarium collections which has been verified by specialists.
Mark Newman is working on revisions of Globba for the Flora of Thailand and Flore du Cambodge, du Laos et du Viêt Nam.
This genus may have as many as 100 species from Sri Lanka to Australia and is most diverse in continental SE Asia. The plants are usually small and most are deciduous, dying down to the rhizome during the dry season. The flowers are extremely delicate and often absent from herbarium specimens which makes classification difficult. We rely heavily on new collections and living material in botanic gardens.
Dr Axel Dalberg Poulsen, Peter Davis Research Fellow, is revising the genus Etlingera in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Vichith Lamxay, PhD student at Uppsala University, is revising Amomum in the Flore du Cambodge, du Laos et du Viêt Nam. This studentship is funded by a bilateral agreement between Sweden and the Lao P.D.R. Several species in this region are collected from the forests for their medicinal properties yet the trade is unregulated because no-one can be sure which species are most valuable or what to call them. To date, Vichith recognises c. 32 species in this area, including 5-7 new to science.
Jane Droop, PhD student of Aberdeen University, is revising Amomum in the Indonesian island of Sumatra where she has found c. 25 species, several of them new to science.
Amomum, as currently circumscribed, is among the largest genera in the family with over 200 species from Sri Lanka to New Guinea and Australia. Recent research shows clearly, however, that the genus is not monophyletic.
Preliminary phylogenetic studies show that the fruit type may be more important than was thought previously. Some species have smooth fruits while others have ridged, winged or spiny fruits.
David Harris, formerly Peter Davis Research Fellow and now Curator of the Herbarium, and Alexandra Wortley are revising Aframomum, the largest African genus of Zingiberaceae.
These plants are widespread in sub-saharan Africa. Most of the c. 70 species grow in forests but a few extend into the savanna. One of the widespread species is also found in Madagascar.
The plants spread very rapidly by long rhizomes, forming dense clumps. Their flowers are often borne near the ground, separate from the leafy shoots and, in most species, last no more than a day.
Many species have tasty, fleshy fruits which are eaten by people. The seeds of a few species are used as spice and are traded under the names "Melegueta Pepper" and "Grains of Paradise". It was for these seeds that the coast of Liberia and part of Sierra Leone was formerly called the Grain Coast.
The leafy shoots are an important part of the diet of herbivores such as gorillas and elephants.
Staff of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and their colleagues in other research institutes have been publishing work on Zingiberaceae for over 40 years. A list of these publications can be found here.
Dr. Achariya Rangsiruji (Kai)
Department of Biology
Faculty of Science
Telephone: +66 2 664 0410/7 ext 8111
Fax: +66 2 260 0128
A study of the infrageneric classification of Alpinia Roxb. (Zingiberaceae) using molecular data. University of Edinburgh, 1999.
Publications arising from the thesis:
Rangsiruji, A., M.F. Newman & Q.C.B. Cronk (2000) A study of the infrageneric classification of Alpinia Roxb. (Zingiberaceae) based on the ITS region of nuclear rDNA and the trnL-F spacer of chloroplast DNA. In K.L. Wilson & D.A. Morrison (eds.), Monocots: Systematics and Evolution. CSIRO, Melbourne.
Rangsiruji, A., M.F. Newman & Q.C.B. Cronk (2000) Origin and relationships of Alpinia galanga (Zingiberaceae) based on molecular data. Edinburgh J.Bot. 57: 9-37.
Dr. Chatchai Ngamriabsakul (Nok)
School of Biology
Institute of Science
Nakhon Si Thammarat
The systematics of the Hedychieae (Zingiberaceae) with emphasis on Roscoea Sm. University of Edinburgh, 2001.
Publications arising from the thesis:
Ngamriabsakul, C., Newman, M.F. & Cronk, Q.C.B. (2000) Phylogeny and disjunction in Roscoea (Zingiberaceae). Edinburgh J. Bot. 57 (1): 39-61.
Ngamriabsakul, C., Newman, M.F. (2000) A new species of Roscoea Sm. (Zingiberaceae) from Bhutan. Edinburgh J. Bot. 57(2): 271-278.
Dr. Marlina Ardiyani
Jalan Ir. H. Juanda 22
PO Box 110
Systematic study of Curcuma L.: turmeric and its allies. University of Edinburgh, 2003.
Classification of Curcuma: a morphological and molecular study. M.Sc. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1997.
M.F. Newman now leads research on the family.
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Charles Dickens is intimately associated with our ideas of Christmas through his novels and through a series of books which have become known as the Chritsmas Books. The first of them, the familiar A Christmas Carol, was written during 1843. It appeared in print that Christmas and was so successful that he followed it up the next Christmas with The Chimes, a Goblin Story. In 1845 came The Cricket on the Hearth, A Fairy Tale of Home, followed by two more, The Battle of Life in 1846 and The Haunted Man in 1848.1
A Christmas Carol sets the tone for all the others. The descriptive passages are filled with animism which one often finds in storybooks: an ancient church tower strikes the hours "as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head;" the fire-plug is "left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice;" and the shops "have great round pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waist-coats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence." Each of the books contains similar passages and each of them, one critic points out, "with the exception of The Battle of Life, is basically the same story: a wretched mortal changes the course of his life through a divine intermediary. It matters little whether it is Marley's Ghost in a Christmas Carol, the Goblins of the Bell in The Chimes, the Genius of the Hearth and Home in The Cricket on the Hearth, or the Phantom in The Haunted Man. It might as well be Cinderella's fairy godmother."2
Readers of Dickens's Christmas books, whether children or adults, are entertained by his ghosts and goblins and by the descriptions of the jollities and feasts of the traditional Christmas, but they also realize that, behind the ghosts, the noise and celebrations, lies a more serious thought; that the spirit of Christmas also includes giving to the world more than one takes from it, living as unselfishly as possible, and devoting oneself to others.3
One writer suggests, that if "during the Christmas festivities, one wishes to escape for a brief spell from the all-pervading spirit of carnival which sometimes does seem entirely alien to the true spirit of Christmas, let one seek a favourite arm-chair, and safely ensconced therein, spend a quiet hour with Dickens; for is he not pre-eminently the arch-priest of the festival, the author best suited to be ones companion by the Christmas fireside."4
1 Oxford, p. 116.
Copyright © 2001 by Rita Smith
|Search the transcripts by date or keyword.
Wednesday, 04-Sep-2002 22:25:05 EDT
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New England Journal of Medicine Study Highlights Need for Rapid, PCR-based Group B Streptococcus (GBS) Testing at Time of Admission for Labor and Delivery
GBS disease is one of the most common infections in the first week following birth and is a leading cause of infant mortality and serious neonatal infections such as sepsis, pneumonia and meningitis. Transmission of GBS occurs from colonized women to their babies during childbirth.
The new article points out that current U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for preventing neonatal GBS disease, which call for culture-based screening of expectant mothers at 35-37 weeks of gestation, have helped to reduce incidence of early-onset GBS disease since their implementation in 2002. However, the study also finds that 61.4% of full-term infants born with GBS disease were born to women who had previously screened negative during their 35-37 week gestation.
“This revealing study shows clearly that screening for GBS at 35 to 37 weeks gestation leaves many newborns at significant risk of GBS infection, presumably due to either false negative culture results or due to a change in GBS status, from negative to positive, over time,” said
Cepheid’s Xpert(R) GBS test is designed to run on a STAT basis, returning positive results in as little as 32 minutes. It is the only in vitro diagnostic test to fully meet current CDC criteria for rapid intrapartum GBS testing. Xpert GBS is also the only PCR-based antepartum and intrapartum GBS test to receive ‘Moderate Complexity’ CLIA categorization by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), enabling healthcare professionals such as labor and delivery nurses to run the test near-patient — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Xpert GBS runs on Cepheid’s GeneXpert(R) System, the world’s leading on-demand molecular diagnostic platform.
About the GeneXpert System Molecular Diagnostic Platform
The GeneXpert System is a closed, self-contained, fully-integrated and automated platform that represents a paradigm shift in the automation of molecular analysis, producing accurate results in a timely manner with minimal risk of contamination. The GeneXpert System is the only system to combine on-board sample preparation with real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction) amplification and detection functions for fully integrated and automated nucleic acid analysis. The system is designed to purify, concentrate, detect and identify targeted nucleic acid sequences thereby delivering answers directly from unprocessed samples. Modular in design, the GeneXpert System has a variety of configurations to meet the broad range of testing demands of any clinical environment.
This press release contains forward-looking statements that are not purely historical regarding Cepheid’s or its management’s intentions, beliefs, expectations and strategies for the future, including those relating to product performance and future market opportunities. Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the company’s current expectations. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties such as those relating to: regulatory developments and changing therapeutic practices regarding testing levels and methods; the failure of products to perform as expected, whether due to manufacturing errors, defects or otherwise; the impact of competitive products and pricing; reimbursement rates for the products; and underlying market conditions worldwide. Readers should also refer to the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Cepheid’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2008 and in its most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q, each filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
All forward-looking statements and reasons why results might differ included in this release are made as of the date of this press release, based on information currently available to Cepheid, and Cepheid assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement or reasons why results might differ.
CONTACTS: For Media Inquiries: For Cepheid Investor Inquiries: -------------------- ------------------------------- Jared Tipton Jacquie Ross Cepheid Corporate Communications Cepheid Investor Relations 408-400-8377 Tel: (408) 400 8329 [email protected] [email protected]
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The Coca-Cola System Announces New Global Targets for Water Conservation and Climate Protection in Partnership With WWF
The Coca-Cola Company, in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), today announced ambitious new targets to improve water efficiency and reduce carbon emissions within its system-wide operations, while promoting sustainable agricultural practices and helping to conserve the world’s most important freshwater basins.
“Our sustainability as a business demands a relentless focus on efficiency in our use of natural resources. These performance targets are one way we are engaging to improve our management of water and energy,” said Muhtar Kent, president and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company.
“In this resource constrained world, successful businesses will find ways to achieve growth while using fewer resources,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF-US. “The Coca-Cola Company’s commitment to conservation responds to the imperative to solve the global water and climate crisis.”
The partnership, announced by WWF and The Coca-Cola Company in 2007 with $20 million in funding, has now been extended an additional two years (through 2012) with the Company providing $3.75 million in new funding.
The Coca-Cola Company also joined WWF’s Climate Savers program in which leading corporations from around the world work with WWF to dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. By 2010, Climate Savers companies will collectively cut carbon emissions by 14 million tons annually – the equivalent to taking more than 3 million cars off the road each year.
Water Efficiency — Saving 50 billion liters in 2012
The Coca-Cola system will improve its water efficiency 20 percent by 2012, compared to a baseline year 2004. While water use is expected to increase as the business grows, this water efficiency target will eliminate approximately 50 billion liters of that increase in 2012.
To support this efficiency target, The Coca-Cola Company and WWF have developed a Water Efficiency Toolkit to help reduce water consumption within bottling plants. This software-based instruction manual has been distributed to managers and operators throughout the Coca-Cola system, providing strategies to shrink the water footprint of their operations.
Climate Protection — Preventing 2 million tons of CO(2) emissions
The Company has set two emissions reduction targets: 1) grow the business, not the carbon system-wide and 2) a 5 percent absolute reduction in Annex 1 (developed) countries. The emissions targets apply to manufacturing operations in the year 2015 compared to a baseline year of 2004.
The Coca-Cola Company and its bottlers anticipate substantial volume growth globally during this period, thus growing the business without growing the carbon is a significant commitment. Without intervention, emissions would grow proportional to volume and reach 7.3 million metric tons in 2015. Thus, the global commitment will prevent the release of more than 2 million metric tons of CO(2) in 2015 – the equivalent of planting 600,000 acres of trees.
Supply Chain Sustainability
The Coca-Cola Company also will work with WWF to promote more sustainable agricultural practices in an effort to reduce the impact of its supply chain on water resources. This work will initially focus on sugarcane production. The Coca-Cola Company and WWF are working with the Better Sugarcane Initiative to establish standards, evaluate suppliers and set goals for the purchase of sugar. The Coca-Cola Company will identify two additional commodities on which to work in 2009.
The Coca-Cola system and WWF are working together to conserve some of the world’s most important freshwater resources, including the Yangtze, Mekong, Danube, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Lakes Niassa and Chiuta, the Mesoamerican Reef catchments, and the rivers and streams in the southeastern region of the United States. More than a dozen production plants and/or bottlers in the areas surrounding these rivers are developing and implementing water stewardship plans to serve as models throughout the Coca-Cola system.
“Water and energy conservation are areas where we can truly make a difference. Last year, we set a goal to return to communities and to nature an amount of water equal to what we use in our beverages and their production. These targets support our work to achieve that goal,” said Kent. “The expansion of our partnership with WWF demonstrates our shared dedication to achieving large-scale results, and a grounded understanding that collaboration is key if we are to help address the world’s water challenges.”
To learn more about the partnership, please visit www.thecoca-colacompany.com or www.worldwildlife.org.
About The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company, refreshing consumers with more than 450 sparkling and still brands. Along with Coca-Cola, recognized as the world’s most valuable brand, the Company’s portfolio includes 12 other billion dollar brands, including Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Coca-Cola Zero, vitaminwater, Powerade, Minute Maid and Georgia Coffee. Globally, we are the No.1 provider of sparkling beverages, juices and juice drinks and ready-to-drink teas and coffees. Through the world’s largest beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the Company’s beverages at a rate of 1.5 billion servings a day. With an enduring commitment to building sustainable communities, our Company is focused on initiatives that protect the environment, conserve resources and enhance the economic development of the communities where we operate. For more information about our Company, please visit our Web site at www.thecoca-colacompany.com.
About World Wildlife Fund
WWF is the world’s largest conservation organization, working in 100 countries for nearly half a century. With the support of almost 5 million members worldwide, WWF is dedicated to delivering science-based solutions to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, stop the degradation of the environment and combat climate change. Visit www.worldwildlife.org to learn more.
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When the UK declared war on Germany at the start of World War I, Canada declared war as well. John
McCrae was a field surgeon in the Canadian artillery and was in charge of a field hospital during the 2nd Battle of
Ypres in 1915.
McCrae's friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle. His burial inspired In Flanders Fields,
which was written on May 3, 1915 and first published in the magazine Punch.
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Easy to grow and reliable, zinnias are bright butterfly magnets that have a long
history as favorite flowers of American home gardeners. Indeed, we tend to take
these popular flowers for granted, perhaps thinking them too ordinary, stiff or
garish or simply not very exciting. I think that once more gardeners are
familiar with the diversity of zinnia flower forms, petal shapes, plant heights
and the allure of the rainbow color palette now available, they will share my
new excitement about these familiar garden companions.
Zinnias are natives of the New World and were probably cultivated in Aztec
gardens along with dahlias, sunflowers and morning glories before the Spanish
conquest of Mexico. They were named 1763 by Linnaeus in honor of Johann Zinn, a
German professor of botany and medicine. The first double forms were introduced
in France in 1856. Zinnias became popular in the US in the late 19th and early
20th century and many familiar forms were bred here including the first cactus
flowering and striped varieties. In the Victorian language of flowers, zinnias
meant "thoughts of an absent friend."
All Renee's Garden Seed Zinnias
To purchase these and other
Renee's Garden Seeds,
Zinnias are certainly among the easiest flowers for anyone, whether just
beginning or experienced in gardening, to germinate and grow directly from seed.
Their easy culture, heat tolerance and colorful mid to late summer show,
blooming hard when other annuals are spent, make them well worth exploring.
Zinnias make superb long-stemmed cutting flowers with long-lasting blooms. I
love planting bright zinnias mixes near other later summer flowers like
and if you have zinnias, you will be inviting butterflies to visit your garden!
Zinnias Elegans is the well-known species with the most modern cultivars in a
wide variety of plant heights, flower sizes, flower forms and colors. As these
vibrant flowers mature, their center discs open into a circle of tiny golden
stars. Today, thanks to active breeders, there is just about every imaginable
flower form: dahlia- flowered, quilled, crested, ball or pompon-like, single,
semi double, fully double. Z. elegans come in every color and some bi-colors
except true blue. Color choices are so broad that you can choose from all the
way from deep, intensely bright shades to soft, creamy pastels and white.
Bi-Colors and striped and speckled varieties are also available. Heights range
from 8 inches to almost 4 feet tall. Zinnias Elegans have also been hybridized
to increase their resistance to disease and give more weather tolerance.
Z. Elegans -- dahlia flowered:
"Benaryâ" Giants" ( "Blue Point") are the #1 florist choice for cut
flowers. Bred and introduced by the Dutch about 10 years ago, these garden beauties have long, strong stems on multi-branching plants that reach 3 to 4
feet tall. Flowers are fully double with densely filled petals that look almost
beaded and are available in 12 sparking colors. They have better mildew
resistance than older large dahlia- flowered mixes, are especially
attractive to butterflies, and make beautiful in bouquets. These are available in many single colors such as "Apricot
Blush", and also in custom blends such as "Hot Crayon Colors" which combines
bright yellow, citrus orange and rich red, "Cool Crayon Colors", which
combines lavender, carmine-rose, soft pink and white,
which blends apricot blush with unusual, vivid chartreuse or "Berry Basket",
with grape, pink, rose and raspberry shades.
"Envy" This zinnia variety belongs in every flower arranger's garden. It's
vivid unusual chartreuse color sets off brighter summer flowers and harmonizes
equally well with soft pastels. The old heirloom cultivar did not have good
color or reliable flower form , but the Benary's Giant selection called "Green
Envy" is much improved with truly double, many petaled green flowers on long
"Pumila" or "Cut And Come Again" This old favorite's name reflects its almost
continuous bloom for several months. Fully double and semi double, 2 to 3 inch
flowers. This well- branched heirloom variety has been exceptional color range
including many pastels. Plants reach about 3-31/2 feet tall. While they are not
particularly disease resistant, these old-fashioned zinnias have a lovely
rounded blossom form and many stems for cutting.
Z. Elegans -- cactus flowered:
Tall, 3-4 foot cactus flower zinnias have semi double,4 to 6 inch, slightly
curved and twisted petals making them resemble quilled chrysanthemums. They
usually come in mixes of bright colors including canary yellow, golden, orange,
crimson, scarlet, apricot, coral, carmine, lilac, rose, pink and white.
"Raggedy Anne" An exuberant mix of these old-fashioned large quilled flowers in
radiant shades that make especially nice bouquets.
Zinnia haageana This more diminutive species is most often available as a bi
-color mix.The oldest heirloom variety is
Persian Carpet, a mix of many singles, semi
doubles and doubles. It comes in a mosaic of chestnut, mahogany, bronze, orange,
and rust, with contrasting circles or picotee edges of yellow and cream that
create a rich tapestry of color. These lovely flowers are multi-branching and
low growing, reaching 12- 18 inches tall and make charming little bouquets.
Zinnias need warmth to germinate and grow easily. To start early indoors: In
cold-weather climates, you can get a head start on the season by starting
zinnias from seed indoors four to five weeks before the last spring frost date.
Sow seeds 1/2" deep and 3 inches apart in a container of moist but not soggy
seed starting mix. Keep warm and moist, fertilize with half strength liquid
fertilizer every 10 days and provide a strong light source until seedlings are
ready to plant outside when spring night temperatures rise above 50° both day
To start directly in the garden: In both cold and mild winter climates, wait
until when all danger of frost has passed, days and nights are evenly on the
50-55° range and weather is warm and settled. Remember: if is too cold, zinnias
simply won't germinate or tender seedlings may suffer from damping off and die,
so it's just not worth trying to start them too early. In the right conditions,
seeds germinate quickly and once seedlings are up and well established, they
will grow rapidly and bloom abundantly all across the country.
Sow seeds in well worked, fertile garden soil in full sun. Space seeds 2 to 3
inches apart in rows 12 inches apart. Cover 1/2" deep and gently firm soil. Keep
soil evenly moist while awaiting germination which takes five to 10 days. When
seedlings are large enough to handle, thin to stand 10 -12 inches apart;
adequate spacing gives plants room to grow and provides the good air circulation
zinnias need to keep plants productive and disease free and producing an
abundance of flowers.
If you live in an area with long summers that don't get too humid, you can plant
zinnias in the spring for summer flowers and then sow again at midsummer for
bountiful fall blooms.
Cut flowers as blossoms first begin to open and petals are tight for longest
vase life. Cut flowers often to enjoy lavish bouquets indoors and give away as
gifts because the more flowers you cut, the more the plants will produce for a
long season of bloom. Feed plants with a good well-balanced flower fertilizer
every few weeks for best flower production and keep evenly watered. Cut long
stems well back into the plant, to keep plants branching low and producing the
best blooms. Strip off the leaves so flowers last longer in a vase. A good
floral preservative can increase vase life for cut zinnias.
One of the most common diseases to afflict zinnias is powdery mildew, especially
in hot areas with humid summers. If this is a serious problem, plant the most
disease resistant varieties (the new hybrids are especially good here) and be
scrupulous about providing full sun, adequate spacing and air circulation
between plants. Avoid overhead watering if at all possible. The powdery mildew
fungus begins to show up in zinnia plantings during late summer. One favorite
remedy is to use one tablespoon of baking soda to one gallon of water and spray
it directly on the leaves and other parts of the affected plant. Weekly spraying
thereafter should provide control.
In very wet weather, viral diseases can be a problem. If only the leaves are
discolored, remove them when cutting so you can still enjoy the flowers in a
vase. Protect young seedlings from slugs and snails by using one of the new nontoxic
controls. If marauding birds , find young seedlings attractive, use bird netting
until seedlings are four to 5 inches tall.
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Query: classification: "42.83"
|Title||Temporal and spatial patterns of laying in the Moluccan megapode Eulipoa wallacei (G.R. Gray)|
|Keywords||Moluccan megapode; Eulipoa wallacei; egg production; lunar synchrony|
|Abstract||The Moluccan megapode Eulipoa wallacei (G.R. Gray, 1860) lays its eggs at night in the sand at communal nesting beaches. The majority of the world’s Moluccan megapode population rely on only two nesting grounds on the islands of Halmahera and Haruku, Indonesia. An understanding of the ecological characteristics of these breeding sites is thus important in terms of conservation. Studies of the largest of the two nesting grounds in Halmahera have shown specific temporal and spatial patterns of egg laying. In this paper I discuss the adaptive significance and conservation implications of these laying patterns.|
|Download paper|| http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/document/46262 |
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The Origins of Christianity
by Revilo P. Oliver
Professor of the Classics, Retired; University of Illinois, Urbana
THIS IS THE REEF on which founder all religions that posit a supreme and benevolent god who is interested in mankind.
The Stoics constructed for their animus mundi a theodicy that evidently satisfied persons who were primarily interested in ethics and desiderated a system of moral certainties to stabilize societies. The Stoic answer was like that given in the Fourteenth Century by William of Occam and the other Nominalists, who saw that the only escape from the impasse was to assert that whatever the Christian god ordained, was, eo ipso, just. The Stoic answer could not content people who wanted a god who could and, if properly appeased, would interfere with the processes of nature and make miracles for his favorites: what use was a god who couldn’t do anything for you? William of Occam’s answer cannot content persons who have our innate and racial sense of justice and refuse to believe that unmerited suffering, agony and death inflicted on innocent and helpless individuals, can be right, no matter who orders it: who can respect a god who rewards evil and punishes good?
It is the business of theologians, of course, to devise arguments and rhetoric that will confuse the issue, and the theologians of all creeds have exhibited a high degree of ingenuity, but the only way to evade the problem of theodicy successfully is to assume, as do several of the Hindu cults, that metempsychosis provides a long series of incarnations that produce a spiritual and moral evolution of the individual from the very simplest and lowest forms of organic life through ascending forms of mammalian life to mankind and then on upward to superhuman species, who reside on the moon or in some place beyond human attainment, and eventually to gods in some well-furnished heaven. On this vast scale, the suffering that comes upon any individual in any one life shrinks to insignificance and, furthermore, is condign and just punishment for the misdeeds of an earlier life and is a necessary process of spiritual purification and evolution.
If the present life is the only one we shall have on earth it will do no good to say that divine injustice in it doesn’t matter because this life will be followed by a few hundred thousand years or a few million years or even an eternity in some heaven that will be equipped to prevent its inhabitants from dying of boredom after a few dozen centuries. To our racial mind, justice does matter and furthermore it is inherently unjust to make an infinite future depend on conduct during a few years by a person who was born with certain innate tendencies and capacities and placed in situations that more or less determined how his character would respond to them.
One of the important junctures in our civilization is marked by the short treatise De libero arbitrio,* written around 1436 by Laurentius Valla, who had the most incisive critical mind of the early Renaissance. Under the transparent veil of a dialogue about Apollo’s power to predict human conduct, Valla demonstrates that no god can be omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent.
* The text was well edited by Maria Anfossi (Firenze, 1934); I have not heard of a translation. Almost all scholars who concern themselves with the Humanists of the Renaissance assume that Valla could not have been so impious as to say anything that was bad for the salvation-business. It is true that at the end of the dialogue Valla says that he has proved that human reason cannot cope with the Divine Mystery, but I take that to be an anticipation of the notion of a "double truth," which enabled Pomponatius and many other philosophers of the age to affirm that they believed by faith what they had just proved to be impossible. In the Fifteenth Century men with inquiring minds had to take precautions to avoid being tortured to death if they annoyed the theologians. The hounds of Heaven were baying on Valla’s trail often enough as it was, and once he was saved only by the intervention of King Alfonso of Naples.
The proof is simple. Take one of the incidents, so common today, in which an obviously innocent little girl of five or six, old enough certainly to feel pain, is raped and blinded or raped and killed by one of the savages on which masochistic or sadistic British and Americans now dote. Now, if there is a god who oversees the lives of men and sparrows, did he foresee the conduct of the savage, whom he created and presumably endowed with a savage’s instincts? If he did not foresee it, he is not omniscient. If he did foresee it, was he able to prevent the child’s agony? If not, he is not omnipotent. If he had the power and did not use it, he willed the crime and he willed the suffering of the child, so he cannot be benevolent.
Theologians, of course, explain that if the girl had not been killed at that time, she might have grown up and become an atheist – or papa must have offended a deity who chose to take out his anger on both the innocent child and her mother (who, of course, may have done something to vex him).* Or we mustn’t think about it, because thinking is bad for souls. None of these explanations will satisfy an Aryan’s sense of justice.
* Every such incident has repercussions on persons other than those immediately involved. Years ago, an old man, with whom I was discussing the efforts of professional holy men to attribute the coincidences that are called luck to intervention by their deity, told me that his life had been shaped by an appointment he had kept when he was a young man. He had decided to keep that crucial appointment in the metropolis by taking a train that passed through his town in the early morning. That morning his alarm clock failed to ring, and when he awoke, he threw on his clothes and ran to the station, although he knew he could not reach it in time. He was fifteen minutes late, but that morning the train, for the first time in many months, was even later: it had been delayed when it struck an automobile on a grade crossing, killing the occupants. "If I had been superstitious," he said, "I would have decided that Jesus so loved me that he killed three persons, a man, his wife, and their child, to enable me to keep my appointment. Or, if the train had not been late, I would have been sure that my sins had so annoyed him that he slipped into my bedroom that night and tampered with the mechanism. But that would have drastically changed the life of my wife, whom I married later, and our children would never have been born. Of course, she and I might have married other spouses, changing both their lives and our own, and each of us would have had quite different children, who would have grown up to change the lives of many others and themselves engender children. The consequences of that accident at the grade crossing are almost infinite and incalculable, for, of course, we should have to consider also the victims and the results of their death."
Valla’s explanation did not too greatly perturb contemporary churchmen, for Christian ditheism then attributed such things to its anti-god, who either had on this earth a power that his celestial antagonist could not overcome or sneaked in to promote the dirty work when God wasn’t looking. Everyone knew, after all, that the Devil was so powerful that he had been able to carry a third of the Christian god up to high mountains and there try to bribe him. But with the current tendency to make Christianity a monotheism, the problem has to be faced.
It is probably impossible to devise for a monotheism a theodicy that will satisfy the Aryan mind. At least, no one has done it yet.
There is one more topic that must be considered in our hurried sketch of the evolution of religions with reference to what we suppose to be the innate mentality of our race. When we speak of any religion today, we automatically think of its priests, a specialized and professional clergy. That is not a necessary connection.
Go to chapter 5
Back to Table of Contents
The Origins of Christianity by R.P.Oliver, to be published by Historical Review Press (160pp £10 inc p&p). Please order now via e-mail [email protected]
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Alfred Strom. Back to Revilo P. Oliver Index
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And why is New Year’s Day an official holiday in Massachusetts? Here’s the Lowell connection from worcester.bettysgenealogy.org :
New Year’s Day, however, was not an American holiday. It was for many years distinctively the French-Canadians’ day. All the mills were open as usual but the French-Canadian help refused to work. This presented difficulties in maintaining operating crews and frequently resulted in trouble between management and employees. It was not until 1914 that New Year’s Day became a legal holiday in Massachusetts. Urged by a demand made by French-Canadians throughout the state, Representative Henry Achin of Lowell obtained passage of the bill in that year. It was preceded by a hard fight having been before our state government for a number of years. Frank P. Allen (Ed. Note: A well known Franco-American resident of Fitchburg) was a member of the legislature in the year of its passage. So, when we celebrate New Year’s Day, we should remember that our own Frank was instrumental in making the holiday possible.
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Blogger: Steve Rowland, Public Affairs Manager
Spring seemed a long way off last week as I took my lunchtime walk through the woods, the leaves on the trees were yet to unfurl, the ground was bare and covered in a mulch of last autumns dead leaves, and a light, cold wintry rain drizzled down.
And yet I realised that my mind had picked up on the subtle changes in the quality of light and drawing out of the days. I became aware of a slight tightness in my ears, an unconscious straining and heightened alertness to the bird song around me. And I thought that after more Springs as a birder than I care to remember, my brain was quietly and unobtrusively saying to my ears to be alert for couple of unremarkable notes of bird song one up followed repetitively by another down, up and down in short bursts, from a bird that takes its name from these two notes of song, the chiff chaff. (photo below).
Naming a bird after the sound it makes is known as onomatopoeia and two other species that occur in the UK the cuckoo and the kittiwake also take their names from their calls.
I will acknowledge here that chiff chaffs are not blessed with the most captivating of names or musical of songs. But for me they compensate for that with the charisma that comes from being the first of our returning migrants to fill our bare Spring woods with their song, perhaps a month before the other returning warblers have got back from a winter spent south of the Sahara.
Chiff chaffs like many of our other warblers, might at a glance appear a little drab and indistinct. In particular at first you might easily confuse a chiff chaff with its close relative the willow warbler. (photo below).
A rough guide to telling them apart is that a willow warblers legs are a light flesh colour whilst a chiff chaffs are black and a chiff chaffs has a more olive coloured plumage (being a birder you carry a veritable colour palette in your head to describe shades of green and brown feathers).
But the surest way to tell these cousins apart is to listen to them singing. Compared to the chiff chaffs repetitive two notes, willow warblers have a to my mind a much nicer song, a lovely tinkling sound that seems to gently descend a set of musical scales before being hauled by the bird back to the top only to descend down them once more.
Willow warblers arrive from their wintering grounds in Africa a little later in the spring than chiff chaffs which tend to spend the winter in the Mediterranean. So my brain wasn't tipping my ears off to listen out for a willow warbler practicing its scales, but for that starting gun of the season, a simple two note Chiff then Chaff song that would light up the woods and put a smile on my face, a sign of the end of winter and the beginning of natures headlong rush into spring.
I didn’t hear a chiff chaff last week but I’ll be out again for a lunchtime walk in the woods this week, listening carefully for those two notes. If you have some time to spare over the next week or so why don’t you go out and see if you can hear a chiff chaff and then tell us here.
Photos credit John Bridges (rspb-images.com)
Blogger: Kate Blincoe, Communications Manager
Look out of your window. The catkins are swaying in the spring breeze, the blue tit is hunting out caterpillars for its young family and an early bumblebee buzzes by. Nature is busy all around us.
What if pound signs were flashing over all these beautiful, natural events? If you look on these living things as paid workers for us then the catkins tree is capturing carbon, the blue tit is performing pest control on your garden and the bumblebee is a professional pollinator. All these creatures are in fact performing tiny actions that in sum, add up to a healthy environment and hence healthy economy. In simple terms, if they didn’t do it for free, we’d have to pay to find a technical replacement.
Let’s look at some of the massive ways in which we benefit financially from nature. Carefully managed wetlands reduce the risk of flooding to our homes and businesses. Salt marshes, such wonderful habitats, provide protection from sea level rise, acting like big sponges. Forests and peat bogs store carbon for us, helping in the battle against climate change.
The list doesn’t end there: It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by bees pollinating crops. Of course, beautiful places with charismatic wildlife also equal booming tourism and lots of visitor spend – especially in our stunning region.
What about you and me and a walk together in the bluebell woods? Does that have pound signs attached to it? Yes. It will reduce our stress levels, increase our heart rates and hence improve our health. It’s a proven fact that nature is good news for the NHS budgets. For children, time spent in nature can even improve their behaviour and performance at school.
As a bit of a nature loving ‘tree hugger’, a part of me screams at this reduction of wonder and marvel to pounds and pennies. Wildlife means so much more than that and has a basic, intrinsic right to exist. I believe that is the case, however, when so many political arguments are made in financial terms, it doesn’t do us any harm to be able to speak that language too.
In a troubled economy, the need for a new development or construction project is often justified by saying growth is critical for our financial future. However, if we trash our special habitats and lose incredible species then, even in crude monetary terms, we risk jeopardising so much more than we gain. We overlook the function that the environment plays in our economy at our peril.
The bottom line is this: We need nature more than it needs us.
Article in Eastern Daily Press on Saturday 10 March 2012.
Photo by Mark Sisson (rspb-images.com)
Blogger: Jane Warren, RSPB in the East Green Team
As we edge along towards spring in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s worth sparing a thought for the climate. Today is the beginning of Climate Change Week (12-18 March), and there are easy ways for us all to get involved. Many of us are already doing our bit, but it’s always good to be reminded! So here are three things to do this week:
Get cooking with Climate Week cuisine: Make food part of the solution to climate change by eating a low carbon meal during Climate Week. Just follow one or all of these three tips: eat less meat or dairy, eat local and seasonal ingredients, and eat leftovers.
Walk, cycle or use public transport: Use Climate Week as an opportunity to use more sustainable ways to get to where you are going. Take the train or bus instead of driving. Take advantage of the spring weather (!) and walk or cycle, getting some additional exercise!
Swap, recycle or upcycle old things: Eliminate waste by finding a second life for things that would otherwise be thrown away. Host an event to swap unwanted items, such as books, toys or clothes, with friends or colleagues. Recycle unusual things like batteries, or electrical goods such as old mobile phones.
You can even recycle through Ebay, by taking up the RSPB’s Ebay for charity challenge. Do you have something lurking in a loft, back room, garage or shed? Something that you know has some saleable value but you have never got around to selling? This could be your chance to do just that and step up for nature at the same time! Please do get in touch with suggestions of what you might have to sell, and we can check if it is worth us getting our fabulous Ebay volunteers to sell it on the auction site for us. Please do not send anything to us without checking first and please note that we can’t accept electrical goods! (It’s worth repeating that so that our collector Matt Howard isn’t locked in the cellar as punishment along with the potential deluge of books, CDs, DVDs, autographed Barry Manilow LPs etc.) Matt is looking forward to hearing from you at [email protected] Tel: 01603 697515.
Our thanks to Climate Week for ideas and tips. Check out their website at www.climateweek.com and get inspired to create a sustainable future!
Blogger: Gena Correale-Wardle, Community Fundraising Officer
Do you remember in January when I blogged about the great partnership the RSPB had with Dozen Artisan Bakery and Pulse Cafe Bar, two great independent eateries in Norwich? I bet you’ve been waiting with baited breath to see how we got on....
Well, today I went to see the lovely manager of Pulse, Helen, as she presented us with a great big cheque (literally – see the photo!) for £86.50. That equates to 173 starters, mains and desserts eaten in aid of the RSPB. Dozen Artisan Bakery sold their field loaves for nature too – another £91 and 91 satisfied tummies and smiles on faces! Wouldn’t it be nice if all fundraising could be that easy?!
The lovely people at both outlets also hosted pin badge boxes and gave out lots of leaflets to promote Big Garden Birdwatch, raising awareness of the project as well as raising even more money (over £40) through pin badge donations. A win-win all round!
We are really glad to work with such great local, independent businesses in the area and hope we can do more with them in future. We are always looking for ways to get businesses involved throughout the whole of the Eastern England region so if you have any links or want to promote your business and raise money for nature in the process, do get in touch!
The money raised will help the RSPB save and protect wildlife supporting schools and families through field teaching programmes and schools visits as well as directly managing habitats for wildlife at our amazing nature reserves.
Thank you to all of you who ate great food and saved nature at the same time. Here’s to more fab little initiatives like this in the future! Email me at [email protected] or call me on 01603 697521.
Blogger: Adam Murray, Communications Officer
Last June you may have remembered my Swift, Swallows & House martins - I am a bit clueless blog post, well just as think I have nailed some of my bird ID skills I recently went on my hols to Osea Island.
We went as a family with my brother and his gang and spent the time walking the island when the causeway (as seen on the Woman in Black movie) was covered by the tide. The island was a perfect tonic as there were no modern day distractions that seem to fill our free time usually. This meant that we had an excuse of not doing very much at all – just what I needed after the crazy hustle bustle of the RSPB Eastern Region office in Norwich.
Each day we would spend many hours in wellies walking the island. In the interior we spotted dancing flocks of skylarks, eyeing foxes in the distance and then the adventurers inside us would walk alongside the beaches and salt marshes to circumnavigate our little piece of Essex. If we were lucky enough to get the tides right we would see vast numbers of birds coming into feed or queuing up ready for the seafood frenzy. The rest of my family were happy to spot a “funny looking goose” or distinctive oyster catcher with their carrot beaks. I on the other hand, trained zoologist and bitten by the RSPB bug, realised that I wasn’t just seeing a few species of animals out there on the mud flats but dozens – all ever so slightly different. However, this is my question to you – how on earth are you supposed to tell the difference? I am now going to give it a go. The keen ones amongst you, feel free to correct me, I won’t take it personally ;)
Dunlin: Little fella, grey wings, white belly, slightly curved beak
Turnstone: Little, black wings, white belly, red legs
Common sandpiper: brown body, straight beak, black eye stripe
Curlew sandpiper: if you squidged the two sandpipers together
Green sandpiper: dark, white bellied sandpiper that is not green
Grey plover: a more speckly version of a turnstone
Curlew: This one I get, bendy beak and big as a chicken!
Redshank: Medium sized, red legs and red beak near face
Spotted redshank: red legs, black top beak, red lower beak
So, can you see why I was confused. It doesn't help that when I was reading the information on my RSPB i-phone app it told me that these are the winter plumages of these birds - so as new species come in for the summer I will have to learn this all over again. I did however figure out that the bird call I has associated with the wilds of southern Ireland ( a previous family holiday) was not the charismatic oyster catcher but the close neighbours the curlew.
I guess the beauty of this whole thing is now, once I get my eye in, I realise how many different species find the eerie and beautiful Essex coast a perfect tonic, just what they need.
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The President of Israel, Moshe Katsav, has accused the World War II allies of failing to take enough measures to save Europe's Jews, and urged the EU to act to root out modern-day anti-Semitism.
Mr Katsav was addressing a forum marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland.
He described the Holocaust as not only a tragedy for the Jewish people, but a failure of humanity as a whole.
Heads of state and government from many countries, including the President, Mary McAleese, gathered at the former camp to commemorate the more than one million people who were murdered there.
As well as Jews, the victims included many Poles, Russians, Gypsies and homosexuals. Some of the last remaining survivors of the death camp have also attended the ceremonies.
Earlier, a forum in Krakow, not far from Oswiecim where the camp was constructed, saw documentaries of World War II showing the liberation of several death camps by the Soviet Red Army.
Anatoly Chapiro, the Russian commander who led the soldiers into Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, said in a videotaped message, 'This must never be allowed to happen again, anywhere.'
Speaking earlier on RTÉ Radio, Mrs McAleese said her thoughts would be with the victims of all the Nazi death camps, but that she would also reflect on how ordinary people helped to make the Nazi killing machine possible.
She was asked if it was time to apologise for the fact that the former Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, offered condolences to Germany after Hitler's death in May 1945.
President McAleese replied that the idea of such an apology had to be seen in a wider context.
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Definition of Syndrome, complete androgen insensitivity
Syndrome, complete androgen insensitivity: A genetic disorder that makes XY fetuses insensitive (unresponsive) to androgens (male hormones). Instead, they are born looking externally like normal girls. Internally there is a short blind-pouch vagina and no uterus, Fallopian tubes, or ovaries. There are testes in the abdomen or the inguinal canal. The complete androgen insensitivity syndrome is usually detected at puberty when a girl should but does not begin to menstrate. The gene for the syndrome is on the X chromosome and codes for the androgen receptor (also called the dihydrotestosterone receptor). There are also partial androgen insensitivity syndrome.Source: MedTerms™ Medical Dictionary
Last Editorial Review: 4/20/2011
Find out what women really need.
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A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown at sacred-texts.com
jer 43:2THE JEWS CARRY JEREMIAH AND BARUCH INTO EGYPT. JEREMIAH FORETELLS BY A TYPE THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR, AND THE FATE OF THE FUGITIVES. (Jer 43:1-13)
Azariah--the author of the project of going into Egypt; a very different man from the Azariah in Babylon (Dan 1:7; Dan 3:12-18).
proud--Pride is the parent of disobedience and contempt of God.
jer 43:3Baruch--He being the younger spake out the revelations which he received from Jeremiah more vehemently. From this cause, and from their knowing that he was in favor with the Chaldeans, arose their suspicion of him. Their perverse fickleness was astonishing. In the forty-second chapter they acknowledged the trustworthiness of Jeremiah, of which they had for so long so many proofs; yet here they accuse him of a lie. The mind of the unregenerate man is full of deceits.
jer 43:5remnant . . . returned from all nations-- (Jer 40:11-12).
jer 43:6the king's daughters--Zedekiah's (Jer 41:10).
jer 43:7Tahpanhes--(See on Jer 2:16); Daphne on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, near Pelusium. They naturally came to it first, being on the frontier of Egypt, towards Palestine.
jer 43:9stones--to be laid as the foundation beneath Nebuchadnezzar's throne (Jer 43:10).
brick-kiln--Bricks in that hot country are generally dried in the sun, not burned. The palace of Pharaoh was being built or repaired at this time; hence arose the mortar and brick-kiln at the entry. Of the same materials as that of which Pharaoh's house was built, the substructure of Nebuchadnezzar's throne should be constructed. By a visible symbol implying that the throne of the latter shall be raised on the downfall of the former. Egypt at that time contended with Babylon for the empire of the East.
jer 43:10my servant--God often makes one wicked man or nation a scourge to another (Eze 29:18-20).
royal pavilion--the rich tapestry (literally, "ornament") which hung round the throne from above.
jer 43:11such as are for death to death--that is, the deadly plague. Some he shall cause to die by the plague arising from insufficient or bad food; others, by the sword; others he shall lead captive, according as God shall order it (see on Jer 15:2).
jer 43:12houses of . . . gods--He shall not spare even the temple, such will be His fury. A reproof to the Jews that they betook themselves to Egypt, a land whose own safety depended on helpless idols.
burn . . . carry . . . captives--burn the Egyptian idols of wood, carry to Babylon those of gold and other metals.
array himself with the land, &c.-- Isa 49:18 has the same metaphor.
as a shepherd, &c.--He shall become master of Egypt as speedily and easily as a shepherd, about to pass on with his flock to another place, puts on his garment.
jer 43:13images--statues or obelisks.
Beth-shemesh--that is, "the house of the sun," in Hebrew; called by the Greeks "Heliopolis"; by the Egyptians, "On" (Gen 41:45); east of the Nile, and a few miles north of Memphis. Ephraim Syrus says, the statue rose to the height of sixty cubits; the base was ten cubits. Above there was a miter of a thousand pounds weight. Hieroglyphics are traced around the only obelisk remaining in the present day, sixty or seventy feet high. On the fifth year after the overthrow of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar, leaving the siege of Tyre, undertook his expedition to Egypt [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 10.9,7]. The Egyptians, according to the Arabs, have a tradition that their land was devastated by Nebuchadnezzar in consequence of their king having received the Jews under his protection, and that it lay desolate forty years. But see on Eze 29:2; Eze 29:13.
shall he burn--Here the act is attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, the instrument, which in Jer 43:12 is attributed to God. If even the temples be not spared, much less private houses.
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Food poverty - defined as the inability to access a nutritionally adequate diet - is a significant issue for many people on the island of Ireland.
Although the cost of healthy food is a major factor, the inability to access to a healthy diet is a complex issue that incorporates education, transport, literacy, culture and environmental planning. Food poverty is yet another outcome of broader determinants of health, such as poor housing, social exclusion and high crime.
With other stakeholders on the island, safefood is addressing the issue of food poverty through advocacy, building the evidence base and supporting community initiatives. Examples of this include:
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How ion-exchange water softeners work
Conventional water softeners have two separate chambers, the resin tank and the brine tank, and use an ion-exchange process to remove the hardness ions calcium and magnesium. Softeners often are able to remove not only calcium and magnesium, but also iron, manganese and radium. Raw feed water is passed through a bed of resin “beads” inside the resin tank where the hardness ions in the feed water trade places on the resin beads with sodium ions that are electrostatically bound to the beads. Eventually, the resin exhausts its supply of sodium and must be “regenerated.” When the beads have no more room for additional calcium and magnesium ions, the unit temporarily goes off-line and the resin tank is flushed with salt water from the brine tank, the source of new exchangeable sodium ions.
Thus, the product water produced by softeners will have no calcium and magnesium, but additional sodium, about 8 mg/L per grain of hardness. Routinely, water softeners are plumbed so that the feed water destined for drinking bypasses the softener when consumers have been placed on low-sodium diets.
The regeneration process involves draining from the resin tank the saltwater solution, now with the added calcium and magnesium ions, and discharging it.
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'And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that ‘they' get justice, and quickly.'
The history of The Salvation Army in fighting injustice receives its greatest compliments when the truth of its actions is written by others and not by us. One story of our past that continues to be repeated is highlighted on the label of a matchbox:
LIGHTS IN DARKEST ENGLAND
Security from Fire!
Fair wages for Fair Work!
The Salvation Army Social Wing
The eyes of William Booth, Founder of The Salvation Army, viewed injustice in the workplaces of England. In particular, matches that were made using phosphorous had an advantage that they could be struck on any dry surface. Yet advantages that increase profit margins of employers often do not take workers into consideration.
As we pray for social justice, both from within The Salvation Army and throughout the world, Isaiah has something to say about our inner focus:
‘You wonder why the LORD pays no attention when you go without eating [fasting] and act humble. But on those same days that you give up eating, you think only of yourselves and abuse your workers' (Isaiah 58:3 Contemporary English Version).
‘Lord, gives us eyes to see the fervour of our worship in connection with the ethics of our action.'
Our story of Booth's matches takes up the cause of workers. The phosphorous in the matchmaking was poisonous. If it got into the gums or jaw of the workers, it slowly ate away the jawbones. This disease, commonly known as ‘phossy jaw', was also known as ‘matchmakers' leprosy' and was most painful and disfiguring. Young girls suffered from this malady and, despite treatment, lost their health and occupations.
‘Lord give us courage to explore conditions of injustice, including trafficked persons for cheap labour within workplace settings.'
The demonstrations that took place against match factory worker injustice included minimal government regulations that factories must provide:
a) Hoods to protect workers against phosphorous fumes.
b) Proper hand-washing arrangements for workers before they ate their food.
‘Lord, are we satisfied that ‘workers' are justly protected from the dangers and prejudice of their occupations? Help us to take personal note of workplace environments, in the community and the church.'
In May 1891, William Booth opened his own match factory as concern for the ‘workers' did not focus on the rights of the poor. The new factory used harmless red phosphorous and paid a higher wage to its workers. The premises were comfortably light and well aired, with a room for making tea.
‘Lord, give us the faith of William Booth to lift our worship into the realms of a practice that demonstrates justice with courage and concern for others.'
The Salvationist enterprise had the desired effect, and by the beginning of the 2oth century safety matches were the rule and ‘phossy jaw' was a matter of history.
What on-going attitudes and conditions in the workplace could become a matter of history through our witness in demonstrating the values and power of the Kingdom of God?
M. Christine MacMillan, Commissioner
(Resource: S. Carvosso Gauntlett, Social Evils the Army Has Challenged, SP&S, 1946.)
You can also read the Prayer Focus in English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
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Zebras (members of the Zebra Family), are native to central and southern Africa. All have vividly contrasting black and white vertical stripes (hence the zebra crossing named after it) on the forequarters, often tending towards the horizontal at the rear of the animal. Originally, most zoologists assumed that the stripes acted as a camouflage mechanism, while others believed them to play a role in social interactions, with slight variations of the pattern allowing the animals to distinguish between individuals. A more recent theory, supported by experiment, posits that the disruptive coloration is an effective means of confusing the visual system of the blood-sucking tsetse fly.
A zebra can travel at a top speed of fifty-five kilometres per hour, slower than a horse. However, it has much greater stamina. During the course of a day the plains zebra can walk around forty kilometres (from its herd, and back again in the evening)
There are three species and many subspecies. Zebra populations vary a great deal, and the relationships between and the taxonomic status of several of the subspecies are unclear.
The Plains Zebra (Equus quagga, formerly Equus burchelli) is the most common, and has or had about five subspecies distributed across much of southern and eastern Africa. It, or particular subspecies of it, have also been known as the Common Zebra, the Dauw, Burchell's Zebra (actually the extinct subspecies, Equus quagga burchelli), and the Quagga (another extinct subspecies, Equus quagga quagga).
The Mountain Zebra (Equus zebra) of southwest Africa tends to have a sleek coat with a white belly and narrower stripes than the Plains Zebra. It has two subspecies and is classified as endangered.
Grevy's Zebra (Equus grevyi) is the largest type, with an erect mane, and a long, narrow head making it appear rather mule-like. It is a creature of the semi-arid grasslands of Ethiopia, Somalia, and northern Kenya. It is endangered too.
Przewalski's Horse, Equus przewalskii
Domestic Horse, Equus caballus
Donkey or African Ass, Equus asinus
Onager or Asiatic Ass, Equus hemionus
Plains Zebra, Equus quagga
Quagga, Equus quagga quagga (extinct)
Burchell's Zebra, Equus quagga burchelli (rediscovered)
Grant's Zebra, Equus quagga boehmi
Chapman's Zebra, Equus quagga antiquorum
Selous' Zebra, Equus quagga selousi
Mountain Zebra, Equus zebra
Cape Mountain Zebra, Equus zebra zebra
Hartmann's Zebra, Equus zebra hartmanni
Grevy's Zebra, Equus grevyi
There was some taxonomic debate over the correct specific name for the plains zebra. More info on the the Extinction Website
The taxonomy previously used by Duncan (1992) continues to be used on the 2004 IUCN Red List
of Threatened Species by the Equid Specialist Group.
Pictures and soundclip at Encarta
More zebra info.
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Many people are commonly plagued by headaches. And anyone who suffers from them can identify with the debilitating and painful affects. Studies show that over 45 million Americans suffer from chronic headaches every year. That is roughly 1 out of every 6 people. (InfoMed.com)
Headaches are such an ordinary affliction today that people do not realize what they actually indicate. Did you know that headaches are the biggest way that stress will manifest itself to a person? Let’s say that you estimate that you get 5 headaches each month. To some this may not seem like a big deal, but it actually may suggest a legitimate stress problem. If you notice a recurrence of headaches, even if the pattern is infrequent, your body might be warning you of a bigger issue. Of course, no 2 people are the same and everyone experiences headaches differently. To be able to identify what is causing your headaches, its important to first understand what type of headache you suffer from.
Tension headaches can be categorized as Episodic or Chronic. Episodic headaches occur randomly and are typically the result of temporary stress, fatigue or anxiety. Doctors will often tell you to take an (OTC) drug to defeat infrequent tension headaches. But if you notice that you are taking something daily, or almost daily, to eliminate headaches, you may be suffering from Chronic Tension Headaches. The symptoms of Tension Headaches include an overall sensation of tightness in the forehead, pressure in your temples, and contracting head and neck muscles.
Migraines continue to remain a mystery to people and researchers. We do not know the cause but migraines often cause people to feel helpless due to the fact that they can strike at any moment and put your life on hold for a few hours or even days. Approximately 29.5 million people in the U.S. suffer from migraines and 4 out of 5 of them report a family history. (National Headache Foundation)
Migraines tend to start out as a dull ache and get progressively worse very quickly. However, there is a very wide range of symptoms and in my experience I have found that each person suffers these headaches in a unique way. Symptoms often include throbbing/pulsating pain in the head, blind spots, sensitivity to light and/or noise, and sometimes even nausea or vomiting. And although they can begin in childhood, they typically occur in people’s 20s and 30s.
Cluster headaches are a more rare form of headaches. I have maybe come across 2 people who have described these symptoms to me. Cluster headaches will attack in groups of headaches. It seems that the pain will arrive immediately with no warning and that it is quite intense. These headaches last for up to an hour, sometimes longer, and will occur several times in one day.
Looking for Salt Lake City Utah Massage Therapy? Contact me at (801) 349-3934.
Now that you are able to identify what type of headache you are suffering from, lets talk about how to get rid of them! Many of my clients have come to me specifically to eliminate headaches. Once we have had our initial bodywork session, I will give them this list of things that have helped previous clients suffering from headaches;
- Drink at least 10 cups of water a day
- Exercise 30 minutes each day
- Refrain from drinking Soda pop
- Cut back on your sugar intake
- Try not to chew gum very often
- If you drink coffee on a very regular basis, cut back or cut coffee out completely
Sometimes their headaches will subside just by following 1 or more of these guidelines and they will not continue getting bodywork from me! But if the headaches persist, I am always very confident that massage will dissolve their headaches for good. In fact, any client who has complained of headaches has always had results after our sessions. In my experience, headaches are more often than not, a muscular problem. There are many muscles in our neck and face which, if addressed, can substantially release tension.
One specific group of muscles, called our Suboccipitals, lie very deep in the back of our neck. In my opinion, massage is the most effective way to reach and loosen these muscles. Massaging the Suboccipitals also helps restore proper blood flow throughout the neck and head to prevent headaches in the future. Below is a posterior view of our Suboccipitals.
This is just one group of muscles that contributes to headaches. Another group is called your Scalenes. These muscles are sectioned into your Anterior, Medius and Posterior Scalenes. It is important for me to work these muscles as well since they also make a huge contribution to causing your headaches.
And the last group of muscles that I like to spend some time on in a head and neck session, is your facial muscles. Believe it or not, but over time your face acquires actual knots. These knots are very small of course but they are partly responsible for the tension you feel during a headache episode.
The biggest reason I am so confident about massage dissolving headaches is because I have learned from personal experience. I suffered migraines a few times a month, sometimes a few times a week, from ages 19-21. Once I started receiving regular massage for about 3 months, my migraines completely went away. If you suffer from headaches, please give massage a try. You will most likely be pleasantly surprised at the results.
If you’re looking for massage and bodywork in Salt Lake City, Utah please contact me at (801) 349-3934.
No related posts.
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The brain is apparently programmed from birth to develop the ability to determine sunrise and sunset, new research on circadian rhythms at the University of Chicago shows.
The research sheds new light on brain plasticity and may explain some basic human behaviors, according to Brian Prendergast, associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago and co-author of a paper published April 27 in the journal PLoS One. The lead author is August Kampf-Lassin, an advanced graduate student at the University.
"This finding may show us why infants of many species eventually learn to discriminate daytime from nighttime," said Prendergast, a researcher on biological rhythms.
In a series of experiments, researchers were able to show that although the ability to see visual stimuli, such as movement, is lost when a developing eye is not exposed to light, the ability to determine light and dark cycles was not affected. The ability to make that distinction between night and day develops as an animal grows, they found.
Other research has found that primates as well as humans adapt naturally to a rhythm of sleeping during the night. But this research shows that the pathway in the circadian system that allows synchrony between the brain and day-night rhythms in the environment is probably an innate feature of development, he said.
"For the first time, we have established that the ability to coordinate circadian rhythms with daily changes in light exposure is not subject to very much plasticity at all — that it is not influenced by changes in the amount of light the brain receives during development," Kampf-Lassin said.
The results of the study are reported in the article "Experience-Independent Development of the Hamster Circadian Visual System," which was drawn from a series of challenging experiments with hamsters.
Shortly after the hamsters' eyes opened, but before they were exposed to light, experimenters placed a contact lens that completely blocked light over one of their eyes. Keeping one eye shut and one open, called monocular deprivation, is a standard method scientists use to study use-dependent plasticity of visual development.
The hamsters then grew up in a light-dark cycle such that only the non-deprived eye was able to send light information into the brain. In adulthood, the lenses were removed, and the function of the hamsters' previously deprived eye was assessed. The researchers found that the hamsters' brains were blind to all classical visual stimuli presented to the deprived eye, such as food or moving stimuli.
Nevertheless, the deprived eye perfectly retained the hamsters' ability to synchronize their circadian rhythms of activity with the 24-hour day. Thus, even though the hamsters could not see objects with the deprived eye, they could use input from the eye to set their internal clocks. The study also showed that long-term monocular deprivation did not affect anatomical projections from the eye to the circadian clock in the brain, and light-induced changes in gene expression in the circadian clock were also normal.
"It's interesting to see how some aspects of behavioral development are hard-wired and develop into adult-typical patterns, even in the total absence of normal environmental input to the system," Prendergast said.
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June 8, 1999 Built in record time in just 12 months, QuikScat, NASA's new ocean-observing satellite, will be launched on a Titan II rocket from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 7:15 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on June 18. This satellite will be NASA's next "El Niño watcher" and will be used to better understand global weather abnormalities.
The Quick Scatterometer, or QuikScat, will provide climatologists, meteorologists and oceanographers with daily, detailed snapshots of ocean winds as they swirl above the world's oceans. The mission will greatly improve weather forecasting.
Winds play a major role in every aspect of weather on Earth. They directly affect the turbulent exchanges of heat, moisture and greenhouse gases between Earth's atmosphere and the ocean. To better understand their impact on oceans and improve weather forecasting, the satellite carries a state-of-the-art radar instrument called a scatterometer for a two-year science mission.
"Knowledge about which way the wind blows and how hard is it blowing may seem simple, but this kind of information is actually a critical tool in improved weather forecasting, early storm detection and identifying subtle changes in global climate," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator of NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC.
The mission will help Earth scientists determine the location, structure and strength of severe marine storms - hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons near Asia and mid-latitude cyclones worldwide - which are among the most destructive of all natural phenomena. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a chief partner in the QuikScat mission, will use mission data for improved weather forecasting and storm warning, helping forecasters to more accurately determine the paths and intensities of tropical storms and hurricanes.
As NASA's next "El Niño watcher," QuikScat will be used to better understand global El Niño and La Niña weather abnormalities. Changes in the winds over the equatorial Pacific Ocean are a key component of the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon. QuikScat will be able to track changes in the trade winds along the equator.
Scatterometers operate by transmitting high-frequency microwave pulses to the ocean surface and measuring the "backscattered" or echoed radar pulses bounced back to the satellite. The instrument senses ripples caused by winds near the ocean's surface, from which scientists can compute the winds' speed and direction. The instruments can acquire hundreds of times more observations of surface wind velocity each day than can ships and buoys, and are the only remote-sensing systems able to provide continuous, accurate and high-resolution measurements of both wind speeds and direction regardless of weather conditions.
The satellite is the first obtained under NASA's Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity program for rapid delivery of satellite core systems. The procurement method provides NASA with a faster, better and cheaper method for the purchase of satellite systems through a "catalog," allowing for shorter turnaround time from mission conception to launch. Total mission cost for QuikScat is $93 million.
Fifteen times a day, the satellite will beam down collected science data to NASA ground stations, which will relay them to scientists and weather forecasters. SeaWinds will provide ocean wind coverage to an international team of climate specialists, oceanographers and meteorologists interested in discovering the secrets of climate patterns and improving the speed with which emergency preparedness agencies can respond to fast-moving weather fronts, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters.
By combining QuikScat's wind data with information on ocean height from another ocean-observing satellite, the joint NASA- French TOPEX/Poseidon mission, scientists will be able to obtain a more complete, near-real-time look at wind patterns and their effects on ocean waves and currents, said Dr. Timothy Liu, QuikScat project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. He added that QuikScat will complement data being collected by other Earth-monitoring satellites such as NASA's currently orbiting Tropical Rain Measurement Mission (TRMM) and Terra, which will be launched later this year.
The 870-kilogram (1,910-pound) QuikScat satellite, provided by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, CO, with its 200-kilogram (450-pound) radar instrument, called SeaWinds, will be placed in a circular, near-polar orbit with a ground speed of 6.6 kilometers per second (14,750 miles per hour). The satellite will circle Earth every 101 minutes at an altitude of 800 kilometers (500 miles).
A press kit with detailed information on the QuikScat launch and mission is available on the Internet at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/files/misc/qslaunch.pdf .
QuikScat is managed for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which also built the Seawinds radar instrument and will provide ground science processing systems. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, managed development of the satellite, designed and built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, CO. NASA's Earth Sciences Enterprise is a long-term research and technology program designed to examine Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere, ice and life as a total integrated system. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Feb. 12, 2008 New Arctic sea floor data just released by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that the foot of the continental slope off Alaska is more than 100 nautical miles farther from the U.S. coast than previously assumed. The data, gathered during a recent mapping expedition to the Chukchi Cap some 600 nautical miles north of Alaska, could support U.S. rights to natural resources of the sea floor beyond 200 nautical miles* from the coast.
"We found evidence that the foot of the slope was much farther out than we thought," said Larry Mayer, expedition chief scientist and co-director of the Joint Hydrographic Center at UNH. "That was the big discovery."
Coastal nations have sovereign rights over the natural resources of their continental shelf, generally recognized to extend 200 nautical miles out from the coast. The Law of the Sea Convention, now under consideration in the U.S. Senate, provides nations an internationally recognized basis to extend their sea floor resource rights beyond the foot of the continental slope if they meet certain geological criteria backed up by scientific data.
The Bush administration supports approval of the convention. The Arctic mapping expedition, conducted between Aug. 17 and Sept. 15, 2007 aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, employed sophisticated echo sounders to survey this relatively unexplored region, providing much finer-grained data and images than existed previously.
"We now have a better geologic picture of what's happening in that area of the Arctic," said NOAA Office of Coast Survey researcher Andy Armstrong, co-chief scientist on the expedition and NOAA co-director of the Joint Hydrographic Center. "These are valuable data for NOAA and the United States, and I'm pleased that we're making them available for anyone to use."
Mapping more than 5,400 linear nautical miles, the research team also found scours on the Chukchi Cap some 1,300 feet below the surface, likely caused by the scraping of an ice sheet on the sea floor, and deep pockmarks of unknown origin at a depth of 1,600 feet.
"The sea floor is full of mysteries, and beneath the Arctic ice cap those mysteries are even harder to reveal," said Mayer. "The kind of full-coverage, high-resolution mapping we do provides critical insight for meeting the criteria of the Law of the Sea Convention as well as the geologic history of the region."
Prior to this work, the only seafloor mapping data available in the ice-covered Arctic came mostly from ice islands and helicopters. These sparse individual measurements produced low-resolution maps compared to the Joint Hydrographic Center's mapping.
Other mapping expeditions led by the Joint Hydrographic Center, a NOAA-UNH partnership, have explored the Bering Sea (2003), the Atlantic coast of the U.S. (2004 and 2005), the Gulf of Alaska (2005), Mariana Islands (2006 and 2007), and the Gulf of Mexico (2007).
"Understanding the bathymetry and geological history of the Arctic is an important part of understanding global climate change," said Mayer. "The Arctic acts as a global spigot in controlling the flow of deep ocean currents that distribute the Earth's heat and control climate. The Arctic is the canary in the coal mine."
* One nautical miles equals 1.15 statute miles or 1852 meters.
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June 30, 2008 NOAA experts are continuing to evaluate a group of bottlenose dolphins feeding in New Jersey’s Shrewsbury River. The biggest threat to them at the moment is the behavior of humans eager to commune with them, rather than lack of food, disorientation, entrapment in the river, or their apparent health.
“It’s not abnormal for coastal bottlenose dolphins to enter a high-saline river like this one in the summer to feed on the abundant prey,” said Larry Hansen, Protected Resources Branch Leader at the NOAA Fisheries Service laboratory in Beaufort, N.C. “I urge people to take advantage of the chance to see and appreciate these animals, but to do so from at least 50 yards away.”
NOAA researchers onsite observed the dolphins actively feeding on menhaden, which are currently quite plentiful in the river. “The animals appear to be in good body condition, they are socializing, and do not appear to be in distress,” said Annie Gorgone, a marine mammal specialist from the NOAA Fisheries Service laboratory in Beaufort, N.C. who observed the dolphins today.
NOAA has no definitive plans to move or attempt to herd the dolphins at this time, although it is preparing to do so if it becomes necessary. “It’s a last resort,” said Teri Rowles, director of NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. Such a process is complicated, usually has mixed success, and is highly stressful for the animals sometimes resulting in death.
Coastal bottlenose dolphins are accustomed to human activities in their habitat, but close encounters can be risky for both people and the animals. Aslo, federal law prohibits interference with the animal’s natural behavior, and harassment is punishable by fines of up to $10,000.
Aside from the obvious dangers presented by collisions between watercraft and dolphins with sometimes fatal consequences for dolphins, swimmers can also get a nasty surprise. “These guys have teeth,” said Hansen, and they use their noses and tail flukes as battering weapons. They are very strong and are much larger than they look. In general it’s best to keep your distance, slow down if you are in a water craft, and let them behave naturally. Feeding wild dolphins is also extremely hazardous.”
NOAA biologists are taking the lead on day-to-day monitoring for the next few days. They will continue to observe and assess the dolphins and conduct prey. They are aboard a research boat homeported at the NOAA Fisheries Service laboratory located at the James J. Howard Laboratory at Sandy Hook.
U.S. Coast Guard has issued a notice to mariners (rebroadcast every 30 minutes) cautioning vessel operators to be cautious and use safe speeds in the area, and to keep a safe distance if the dolphins are present.
NOAA Office of Law Enforcement special agents, conservation officers from the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, and the New Jersey state police officers are assisting with enforcement of laws that prohibit marine mammal harassment.
If you see an injured dolphin or other marine mammal in the area, contact the Marine Mammal Stranding Center at 609-266-0538, or the U.S. Coast Guard on Channel 16..
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May 28, 2009 A procedure that uses heat generated by radio waves to treat Barrett's esophagus, a condition caused by acid reflux (severe heartburn), can eliminate signs of the potentially cancer-causing disorder and reduce the risk that the disease will progress.
Findings from the first multicenter trial of the procedure, called radiofrequency ablation, could mean patients have an alternative to surgery for treating Barrett's esophagus. The procedure uses a scope inserted through the mouth to destroy the abnormal tissue.
"Patients with Barrett's esophagus can go on to develop esophageal cancer," says Steven A. Edmundowicz, M.D., lead investigator at the study site at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Cancer of the esophagus usually is deadly. Less than 15 percent of patients with esophageal adenocarcinoma survive for five years, and in those with advanced Barrett's esophagus, the risk that the condition will advance to become cancer is about 6 percent per year."
In Barrett's esophagus, part of the lining of the esophagus is replaced with cells that resemble intestinal cells. As the condition progresses, these cells become increasingly disordered. Long-standing acid reflux disease is common in those who develop Barrett's esophagus, which affects about 1 percent of adults in the United States.
A total of 127 patients at 19 sites took part in the study, which used endoscopes to diagnose the disease and then to deliver radiofrequency ablation to the abnormal lining of the esophagus. The technique heats the abnormal tissue to destroy it while leaving the deeper layers of the esophagus undamaged.
All patients in the study had the disordered, cellular growth called dysplasia associated with more advanced Barrett's esophagus. Patients were classified as having either low-grade dysplasia or high-grade dysplasia. Regardless of how they were classified for the study, patients received the anti-reflux medication esomeprazole (Nexium), to keep their reflux disease in check as much as possible.
Led by Nicholas J. Shaheen, M.D., at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the investigators at the various study sites randomly selected patients to either receive radiofrequency ablation or to undergo a sham procedure in which endoscopes were inserted through the mouth and the lining of the esophagus was examined, but no radio waves were delivered.
Two patients received the actual treatment for every one who got a sham procedure. Those who received the ablation treatment could get up to four treatments during the 12 months of the study. Following the study period, those who had not received ablation therapy were given the option of getting the treatment.
In the patients who had the treatment, dysplasia disappeared in just over 90 percent of patients with low-grade disease and in more than 80 percent of those with high-grade disease compared to about 23 percent of the low-grade patients and 19 percent of the high-grade patients who had sham procedures rather than the ablation therapy. In 78 percent of treated patients, not only did dysplasia disappear, but all the abnormal intestinal-type cells were eliminated as well.
"During the 12-month study period, we detected fewer cancers in the ablation group than in the control group," says Edmundowicz, a professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology. "But because cancers occurred in a total of only five study patients, the numbers are not as powerful regarding cancer as they are regarding eradication of Barrett's esophagus."
The risk of progressing from Barrett's esophagus to esophageal cancer is approximately 1 percent for those with low-grade dysplasia and 6 percent for those with high-grade disease.
"From these short term results, it appears we may have another useful tool in our treatment arsenal," says Edmundowicz, who is a staff physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and a gastroenterologist at the Siteman Cancer Center. "Additional follow-up will be necessary to demonstrate the true effectiveness of radiofrequency ablation in preventing esophageal cancer in patients with Barrett's esophagus. "
Most study subjects tolerated the treatments very well, he says. "The one side effect that most ablation patients experienced was soreness in the chest following therapy, this was easily managed with medications, and they were less sore than if they had surgery, which has been the primary treatment option," he says.
The surgical option is offered to patients with Barrett's esophagus found to have severe dysplasia or cancer. The type of surgery varies, but it usually involves removing most of the esophagus, pulling a portion of the stomach up into the chest and attaching it to what remains of the esophagus.
The study was supported by BARRX Medical, which manufactures the ablation device. All patients in the study also received the anti-reflux drug. Edmundowicz has received lecture support from BARRX Medical.
Study medication was provided by AstraZeneca. Statistical analysis and data management were supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Other sites involved in the study included the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, Mo.; Gastrointestinal Associates, Knoxville, Tenn.; Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Fla.; South Arizona Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Tucson; Mayo Clinic Rochester, Rochester, Minn.; Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland; Oregon Health and Sciences University, Portland; Mayo Clinic Arizona, Scottsdale; Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston; Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, N.H.; Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, West Roxbury, Mass.; University of California, Irvine, Orange; University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas; Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia; Tacoma Digestive Disease Research Center, Tacoma, Wash.; University Hospitals – Case Medical Center, Cleveland; and Columbia University Medical Center, New York.
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- Shaheen NJ, et al. Radiofrequency ablation in Barrett's esophagus with dysplasia. New England Journal of Medicine, vol 330 (22), May 28, 2009 [link]
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Mar. 12, 2012 Children may perform better in school and feel more confident about themselves if they are told that failure is a normal part of learning, rather than being pressured to succeed at all costs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
"We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority," said Frederique Autin, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France. "By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material. Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial part of learning could stop a vicious circle in which difficulty creates feelings of incompetence that in turn disrupts learning."
The study, published online in APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, could have important implications for teachers, parents and students, said Jean-Claude Croizet, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Poitiers who supervised the research based on Autin's doctoral dissertation. "People usually believe that academic achievement simply reflects students' inherent academic ability, which can be difficult to change," Croizet said. "But teachers and parents may be able to help students succeed just by changing the way in which the material is presented."
In the first experiment with 111 French sixth graders, students were given very difficult anagram problems that none of them could solve. Then a researcher talked to the students about the difficulty of the problems. One group was told that learning is difficult and failure is common, but practice will help, just like learning how to ride a bicycle. Children in a second group were just asked how they tried to solve the problems. The students then took a test that measures working memory capacity, a key cognitive ability for storing and processing incoming information. Working memory capacity is a good predictor of many aspects of academic achievement, including reading comprehension, problem solving and IQ. The students who were told that learning is difficult performed significantly better on the working memory test, especially on more difficult problems, than the second group or a third control group who took the working memory test without doing the anagrams or discussions with researchers.
A second experiment with 131 sixth graders followed a similar procedure with the difficult anagrams and discussions with a researcher. An additional group of students took a simpler anagram test that could be solved, and this group was not told that learning is difficult. All of the students then completed a reading comprehension test. The children who were told that learning is difficult scored higher than the other groups, including the students who had just succeeded on the simple test. How students think about failure may be more important than their own success when learning challenging skills, the study noted.
A third experiment with 68 sixth graders measured reading comprehension and asked questions that measured students' feelings about their own academic competence. The group that was told that learning is difficult performed better in reading comprehension and reported fewer feelings of incompetence.
The study noted that the students' improvement on the tests most likely was temporary, but the results showed that working memory capacity may be improved simply by boosting students' confidence and reducing their fear of failure. "Our research suggests that students will benefit from education that gives them room to struggle with difficulty," Autin said. "Teachers and parents should emphasize children's progress rather than focusing solely on grades and test scores. Learning takes time and each step in the process should be rewarded, especially at early stages when students most likely will experience failure."
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- Frédérique Autin, Jean-Claude Croizet. Improving Working Memory Efficiency by Reframing Metacognitive Interpretation of Task Difficulty.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2012; DOI: 10.1037/a0027478
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May 4, 2012 Researchers in Spain have found that at least some of the individuals claiming to see the so-called aura of people actually have the neuropsychological phenomenon known as "synesthesia" (specifically, "emotional synesthesia"). This might be a scientific explanation of their alleged ability.
In synesthetes, the brain regions responsible for the processing of each type of sensory stimuli are intensely interconnected. Synesthetes can see or taste a sound, feel a taste, or associate people or letters with a particular color.
The study was conducted by the University of Granada Department of Experimental Psychology Óscar Iborra, Luis Pastor and Emilio Gómez Milán, and has been published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. This is the first time that a scientific explanation has been provided for the esoteric phenomenon of the aura, a supposed energy field of luminous radiation surrounding a person as a halo, which is imperceptible to most human beings.
In basic neurological terms, synesthesia is thought to be due to cross-wiring in the brain of some people (synesthetes); in other words, synesthetes present more synaptic connections than "normal" people. "These extra connections cause them to automatically establish associations between brain areas that are not normally interconnected," professor Gómez Milán explains. New research suggests that many healers claiming to see the aura of people might have this condition.
The case of the "Santón de Baza"
One of the University of Granada researchers remarked that "not all 'healers' are synesthetes, but there is a higher prevalence of this phenomenon among them. The same occurs among painters and artists, for example." To carry out this study, the researchers interviewed some synesthetes including a 'healer' from Granada, "Esteban Sánchez Casas," known as "El Santón de Baza".
Many local people attribute "paranormal powers" to El Santón, because of his supposed ability to see the aura of people "but, in fact, it is a clear case of synesthesia," the researchers explained. According to the researchers, El Santón has face-color synesthesia (the brain region responsible for face recognition is associated with the color-processing region); touch-mirror synesthesia (when the synesthete observes a person who is being touched or is experiencing pain, s/he experiences the same); high empathy (the ability to feel what other person is feeling), and schizotypy (certain personality traits in healthy people involving slight paranoia and delusions). "These capacities make synesthetes have the ability to make people feel understood, and provide them with special emotion and pain reading skills," the researchers explain.
In the light of the results obtained, the researchers remarked on the significant "placebo effect" that healers have on people, "though some healers really have the ability to see people's 'auras' and feel the pain in others due to synesthesia." Some healers "have abilities and attitudes that make them believe in their ability to heal other people, but it is actually a case of self-deception, as synesthesia is not an extrasensory power, but a subjective and 'adorned' perception of reality," the researchers state.
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- E.G. Milán, O. Iborra, M. Hochel, M.A. Rodríguez Artacho, L.C. Delgado-Pastor, E. Salazar, A. González-Hernández. Auras in mysticism and synaesthesia: A comparison. Consciousness and Cognition, 2012; 21 (1): 258 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2011.11.010
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Recklinghausen Tonometer (sphygmomanometer), Germany, 1915-1925
This tonometer is a type of sphygmomanometer. A sphygmomanometer measured the force, rate and variations in the pulse. The tonometer consists of two overlapping cuffs. It measures the systolic and diastolic blood pressure. This means the force that blood flows with from the heart into the arteries and the forces as the heart relaxes and fills again with blood. It is the commonest technique for measuring blood pressure. It is also completely safe. This device was developed by Heinrich von Recklinghausen (1867-1942) in the 1920s. He was a leading researcher in blood pressure and blood pressure measurement.
Related Themes and Topics
There are 367 related objects. View all related objects
An instrument used by medical staff to measure blood pressure. Usually made up of a cuff which is placed around the arm of a patient, and a measuring unit that shows the patient's blood pressure.
The study of diseases affecting the heart and blood vessels.
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During the Star Wars years of the 1980s, Tom Paterson worked at a defense think tank creating elaborate mathematical models to help military commanders quickly decide which weapons to deploy to counter incoming missiles. Inputs from hundreds of sensors had to be combined to generate a consummate picture of events that would be unfolding in a matter of minutes, enabling the fateful choice about when to launch.
When the cold war ended, Paterson, like many defense engineers, tried to find a way to apply his skills elsewhere. He ultimately took on a task that made shooting down missiles seem pedestrian. A challenge faced by engineers in the Star Wars program--designing software to pick out critical targets despite an overload of data--carried over to simulations of how drugs work in the metabolic and immune systems that drive the most complex machine we know.
This article was originally published with the title Reverse-Engineering Clinical Biology.
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Prepare for Take-Off With Fun Flight Activities
Fasten your seatbelt for a fanciful flight into aeronautics with Ms. Frizzle and her students.
One dozen dynamic experiments lead children through the construction of a balloon-jet, experimentation with parachutes, creation of the ultimate paper airplanes and more.
Make a spinner soar or paper magically rise, move floating ping pong balls, collapse a juice box, fly a glider, lift off rockets, and more as you explore the science of flight.
Ages 5 and up.
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A study in The Journal of Cell Biology shows how a transcription factor called STAT3 remains in the axon of nerve cells to help prevent neurodegeneration. The findings could pave the way for future drug therapies to slow nerve damage in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
In Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases, nerve cells usually die in stages, with axons deteriorating first and the cells themselves perishing later. Axon degeneration may represent a turning point for patients, after which so much nerve damage has accumulated that treatments won't work. Researchers have tested several proteins for their ability to save axons. One of these molecules, CNTF, rescues axons in rodents and extends their lives. But it caused severe side effects in patients during clinical trials. "Acting on the same pathway but farther downstream could be an ideal way to improve the situation for motor neuron disease" and possibly for other neurodegenerative diseases, says senior author Michael Sendtner from the University of Wuerzburg in Germany.
A JCB study shows how the protein CNTF activates the transcription factor STAT3 (green), which lingers in the axon (blue) and helps stabilize microtubules by inhibiting a protein called stathmin (magenta). STAT3 and stathmin colocalize in axonal branch points (arrowheads) and growth cones (arrow).
To discover how CNTF works, Sendtner and his colleagues studied mice with a mutation that mimics ALS. The researchers found that CNTF not only prevented shrinkage of the rodents' motor neurons, it also reduced the number of swellings along the axon that are markers of degeneration. It is known that CNTF indirectly turns on the transcription factor STAT3, so the researchers wanted to determine if STAT3 is behind CNTF's protective powers. They tested whether CNTF helps motor neurons that lack STAT3 and discovered that, in the mutant mice, axons lacking STAT3 were half as long as those from a control group after CNTF treatment
Once it has been activated, STAT3 typically travels to the nucleus of the neuron to switch on genes. But the researchers were surprised to find that most of the axonal STAT3 did not move to the nucleus and instead had a local effect in the axon. Specifically, the team found that activated STAT3 inhibited stathmin, a protein that normally destabilizes microtubules. When the team removed stathmin in motor neurons from the mutant mice, the axons grew at the same rate as axons from normal mice but didn't elongate any faster after doses of CNTF. These results indicate that CNTF mainly stimulates axon growth by thwarting stathmin and suggests that drugs to block stathmin could slow neuron breakdown in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
Local axonal function of STAT3 rescues axon degeneration in the pmn model of motoneuron disease. Selvaraj, B.T., et al. 2012. J. Cell Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.201203109.
Rockfeller University Press
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(Sen) - Inventive techniques using observations with some of the world's biggest telescopes have allowed astronomers to discover five new planets orbiting one of the closest stars to the Earth.
Tau Ceti, which lies only 12 light-years away and can easily be spotted on a clear night, is a star similar to the Sun and also single. One of the new worlds around it is in its habitable zone, so named because water could exist on it in liquid form.
The new planets all have sizes, or masses, between two and six times that of the Earth, making the new solar system one of the least massive yet found. But that is not altogether surprising because smaller worlds are bound to be easier to detect when they are closer to us.
The discoveries, which come just two months after the announcement of an Earth-sized planet in the nearest star system to us, Alpha Centauri, were made by an international team from the UK, Chile, the USA and Australia.
They examined the starlight from Tau Ceti using spectrographs on three telescopes - HARPS on the 3.6m telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile, UCLES on the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Siding Spring, Australia, and HIRES on the 10m Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii (567 data points).
After making more than 6,000 measurements, the team using computer modelling techniques and managed to improve the sensitivity of their observations so that smaller planets than normal revealed themselves in the data.
The team's leader, Mikko Tuomi from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, explained: “We pioneered new data modelling techniques by adding artificial signals to the data and testing our recovery of the signals with a variety of different approaches. This significantly improved our noise modelling techniques and increased our ability to find low mass planets."
Hugh Jones, also from the University of Hertfordshire, said: "We chose Tau Ceti for this noise modelling study because we had thought it contained no signals. And as it is so bright and similar to our Sun it is an ideal benchmark system to test out our methods for the detection of small planets."
Where to spot Tau Ceti in the night sky. Credit: University of Hertfordshire
The new worlds add to a harvest of more than 800 exoplanets that have been discovered around other stars since 1995. Most of those found have been "hot Jupiters" - gas giants zipping round close to their host stars in just days.
Team member Steve Vogt, from University of California Santa Cruz, said "This discovery is in keeping with our emerging view that virtually every star has planets, and that the galaxy must have many such potentially habitable Earth-sized planets. They are everywhere, even right next door!
"We are now beginning to understand that Nature seems to overwhelmingly prefer systems that have a multiple planets with orbits of less than one hundred days.
"This is quite unlike our own Solar System where there is nothing with an orbit inside that of Mercury. So our Solar System is, in some sense, a bit of a freak and not the most typical kind of system that Nature cooks up."
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According to Jerry Ostriker (Plumian Professor, Cambridge; Professor of Astrophysics, Princeton; Provost, Princeton), "Surveys aren’t just something that astronomers do, they are the only thing astronomers do." These words are understandable, given Prof. Ostriker’s intimate association with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that is presently transforming our view of the optical universe. The ability to systematically survey one quarter of the sky, with the dynamic range and spatial resolution to zoom in to study individual objects, is providing us with the first truly 3-dimensional map of the nearby cosmos. The optical portion of the spectrum unveils the moderately energetic and hot components of the universe, but the physics of the cool constituents is probed at radio wavelengths. [New Paragraph] The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) of 350 telescopes, each 6.1 m in diameter, will do for the radio sky what the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has done for the optical sky. And it will do it so rapidly that it will also provide the first systematic look at the transient radio universe. The ATA provides simultaneous access to any frequency between 500 MHz and 11.2 GHz, with four separate frequency channels feeding a suite of signal processing backends that can produce wide-angle radio images of the sky in 1024 colors, and at the same time, study up to 32 point sources of interest within its large field of view. This new approach to commensally sharing the sky allows SETI (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) and traditional radio astronomical science to both use the telescope nearly all the time: our tools are beginning to be commensurate with the size of the vast explorations of the radio sky that we wish to undertake. [New Paragraph] This talk will put the ATA into context with the rest of the SETI activities around the world and describe the initial SETI observations we intend to conduct.
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- Get Involved
October 11, 1997 - December 7, 1997
Museum: American History Museum
Location: 1st Floor, Taylor Gallery
Photographs, text, and objects trace the history of African American music from its roots in slavery and worship practices. The core of the exhibition consists of the following 6 thematic sections: the use of sacred songs to commemorate historical events; the ways in which spirituals helped slaves both survive and resist enslavement; and the development of the spiritual concert tradition, the African-American quartet, and gospel music. Included are record albums, maps, sheet music, musical instruments, baptismal gowns, and church memorabilia. Adapted from the 1994 award-winning radio series.
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- May 31 - King Library Opens at 1:00 PM
The Holocaust (1939 -1945)
Genocide, meticulously planned in Nazi Germany and executed with international complicity, resulting in the destruction of the European Jewish Community (Six million people - men, women and over one million children) and taking the lives of “political dissidents, P.O.W.'s, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill. “ The Holocaust: a nightmare of brutal, technologically assisted criminality, with a destructive fallout working its devilment first amongst the living, and then into the being of generations to come.
Maus Trilogy, by Art Spiegelman
In graphic novel format, Art Spiegelman presents a unique and deeply personal account of the Holocaust, intertwining history, parental interview, and his own memoir of historically induced emotional trauma. A tragic tale made bearable by its artistic presentation.
Vladek Spiegelman's lifestory continues in this anguishing chronical of separation, loss, survival and lasting wounds.
The inside story of the creation of Art Spiegelman's 1992 Pulitzer Prize awarded graphic novel, Maus. (Complete with hyperlinked DVD.)
On Exhibit through July 12th, 2012 at King Library – 5th Floor – Cultural Heritage Area
The Courage To Remember" is a 42 panel educational exhibit on the Holocaust of 1933-1945. It is an historical account of the Nazis' murderous campaign in which 6 million Jews and others (political dissidents, P.O.W.'s, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill) were killed between 1933 and 1945. The crimes of the Nazis during the Holocaust serve as a dark chapter of the 20th century. Yet, the causes of the Holocaust remain with us today. Man's flawed nature, racism and complacency of ordinary people in the persecution of others persist therefore, the need for this exhibit. Individual citizens must have the courage to remember, educate themselves of this tragedy and commit to prevent such crimes from happening again.
This exhibit of the Museum of Tolerance is made possible by an educational grant from SNCF and presented by the Foundation for California.
The Holocaust - A Research Guide to the SJPL Catalog
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From Abracadabra to Zombies | View All
N'kisi & the N'kisi Project
N'kisi (pronounced ‘‘in-key-see’’) is a captive bred eight or nine-year-old hand raised African Grey Parrot whose owner, Aimée Morgana, thinks uses language. She doesn't think he just sounds out words. She thinks he communicates with her in language, which would in effect make N'kisi a rational parrot. For example, N'kisi utters "pretty smell medicine" when he wants to describe the aromatherapy oils that Aimée uses.* Furthermore, Aimée says her parrot has a fine sense of humor and knows how to laugh. Imagine having conversations with a humorous parrot. Think of all the things you could talk and joke about, besides aromatherapy. You could discuss the fame that would come to anyone who had a parrot that can think and converse in intelligent discourse, like pretty smell medicine and look at my pretty naked body.* And when some nasty skeptic makes fun of you, the two of you can joke about it.
I'm afraid that this story stretches the boundaries of reasonable credibility, though stories of rational parrots go back at least to the 17th century. John Locke, for example, relates a tale of a Portuguese-speaking parrot of some note in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (II.xxvii.8). These cases are more likely cases of self-deception, delusion, and gullibility than of language-using parrots. Listen to this audio clip of N'kisi, Aimée, and a toy that "talks" when a button is pushed. First listen without reading the transcript. Some of it is intelligible, especially after the fourth or fifth repetition, but it is difficult to understand the "conversation," especially with the toy making its sounds as Aimée stimulates her parrot. Some of the tape sounds like gibberish until you are told what to listen for. When you listen while reading the transcript something amazing happens: you can hear just what you're reading. Why is that? The same thing happens when you listen to audio tapes played backward. When you just listen without anyone telling you what to listen for, you usually don't understand anything intelligible. But as soon as someone shows or tells you what to listen for, you can hear the message. Such is the power of suggestion and the way of audio perception. Hearing is a constructive process, like vision, in that bits of sensory data are "filled in" by the brain to produce a visual or auditory perception that is clear and distinct, and in accord with your expectations. Consider the following from an interview with Dr. Irene Pepperberg, Morgana's inspiration, who has been studying Alex, an African Grey Parrot, for many years:
We were doing demos at the Media Lab [at MIT] for our corporate sponsors; we had a very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to see Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, "Alex, what sound is blue?" He answers, "Ssss." It was an "s", so we say "Good birdie" and he replies, "Want a nut."
Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, "What sound is green?" Alex answers, "Ssshh." He's right, it's "sh," and we go through the routine again: "Good parrot." "Want a nut." "Alex, wait. What sound is orange?" "ch." "Good bird!" "Want a nut." We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh."
Not only could you imagine him thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the point was that he had leaped over where we were and had begun sounding out the letters of the words for us. This was in a sense his way of saying to us, "I know where you're headed! Let's get on with it," which gave us the feeling that we were on the right track with what we were doing.*
Dr. Pepperberg thinks the bird is responding cognitively to her questions rather than simply responding to a stimulus. She thinks the bird is getting frustrated, but she has stipulated earlier in the interview:
I never claim that Alex has full-blown language; I never would. I'm not going to be able to put Alex on a "T" stand and have you interview him the way you interview me.
So, whereas you or I might say "give me the nut or this interview is over" were we parrots with intentionality and language, the parrot's movements and sounds have to be less direct and more complex, so that they have to be interpreted for us by Pepperberg. In her view, Alex is "clearly getting more frustrated" and his frustration culminates with a "very slitty-eyed" expression. But this is Pepperberg's interpretation, as is her hearing the bird sound out the letters of the word 'nut'. It could have been a stutter for all we know, but Pepperberg is facilitating Alex's communication by telling us what she hears. The final paragraph indicates that Pepperberg is having a hard time drawing the line between imagining what a parrot might be thinking and projecting those thoughts into the parrot's movements and sounds. She's also having a hard time getting grant money (NIH turned her down), so she started her own private foundation, the Alex Foundation.
When news of N'kisi broke on the pages of BBC online, there was no mention in the article by Alex Kirby of the parrot having conversations with people other than Aimée Morgana. (The story was originally told in USA Today in the February 12, 2001, edition.) Despite the headline "Parrot's oratory stuns scientists," there was no evidence given that the parrot had stunned anyone during a conversation. It seems that Aimée is to her parrot what the facilitator is to her client in facilitated communication, except that the parrot is actually providing data to interpret and is more like clever Hans, the horse that responded to unconscious movements of his master, than a disabled human who may not be providing any content or direction at all to the facilitator. It is Aimée who gives intentionality to the parrot's sounds. She is the one who attributes 'laughter' to his shrieks and conscious awareness to his responses, though those responses could be due to any one of many stimuli, consciously or unconsciously provided by Aimée or items in the immediate environment. Nevertheless, Dr. Jane Goodall, who studies chimpanzees, met N'kisi and said that he provides an "outstanding example of interspecies communication." There is some evidence, however, that much of the work with language-using primates also mistakes subjective validation by scientists for complex linguistic abilities of their animal subjects (Wallman 1992).
According to Mr. Kirby, N'kisi not only uses language but has been tested for telepathy and he passed the test with flying colors:
In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards.
Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance.
Kirby doesn't provide any details about the experiment, so a reader might misinterpret this claim as implying that this parrot did about twice as well as people did in the ganzfeld telepathy experiments. In those experiments, subjects in separate rooms were monitored as one tried to telepathically send information from a picture or video to the other. Typically, there was a 20% chance of guessing what the item was but results as high as 38% were reported in some meta-analyses. If the parrot scored three times better than chance, then he would have gotten 60% correct. The odds of a parrot randomly blurting out words that match up 60% of the time with pictures being looked at simultaneously in another room are so high that there is virtually no way that this could happen by chance. However, as you might suspect, Kirby's claim is a bit misleading.
I assume that Kirby was writing about an experiment that was part of the N'kisi project, a joint effort by Morgana and Rupert Sheldrake to test not only the parrot's language-using abilities but his telepathic talents as well. Sheldrake has already validated the telepathic abilities of a dog and thinks the "findings [of this experiment] are consistent with the hypothesis that N'kisi was reacting telepathically to Aimée's mental activity."*
The full text of Sheldrake's study published in the peer reviewed Journal of Scientific Exploration is available online. The title of the paper would send most journal editors to their grave, killed by laughter: "Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy." Fortunately for Sheldrake and his associates there will always be a sympathetic editor for another story like that of J. B. Rhine and the telepathic horse, "Lady Wonder." At least Sheldrake's protocols show some measure of sophistication, unlike Rhine's. Even so, as the editor at the Journal of Scientific Exploration commented: "once again, we have suggestive results, a level of statistical significance that is less than compelling, and the devout wish that further work with refined protocols will ensue."* So, we'll just have to wait and see whether further study of N'kisi supports the telepathic hypothesis.
Anyway, here is how Sheldrake set up the experiment. He first compiled a list of 30 words from the bird's vocabulary that "could be represented by visual images." A package of 167 photos from a stock supplier was used for the test. Since only 20 of the photos corresponded to words on the list, the word list was reduced to 20. The word 'camera' was removed from the list because 'N’kisi "used it so frequently to comment on the cameras used in the tests themselves." Thus, they were left with 19 words.
During the tests, N’kisi remained in his cage in Aimée’s apartment in Manhattan, New York. There was no one in the room with him. Meanwhile, Aimée went to a separate enclosed room on a different floor. N’kisi could not see or hear her, and in any case, Aimée said nothing, as confirmed by the audio track recorded on the camera that filmed her continuously. The distance between Aimée and N’kisi was about 55 feet. Aimée could hear N’kisi through a wireless baby monitor, which she used to gain ‘‘feedback’’ to help her to adjust her mental state as image sender.
Both Aimée and N’kisi were filmed continuously throughout the test sessions by two synchronized cameras on time-coded videotape. The cameras were mounted on tripods and ran continuously without interruption throughout each session. N’kisi was also recorded continuously on a separate audio tape recorder. (Sheldrake and Morgana 2003)
According to Sheldrake:
We conducted a total of 147 two-minute trials. The recordings of N’kisi during these trials were transcribed blind by three independent transcribers....He scored 23 hits: the key words he said corresponded to the target pictures....If N’kisi said a key word that did not correspond to the photograph, that was counted as a miss, and if he said a key word corresponding to the photograph, that was a hit. (Sheldrake and Morgana 2003)
However, sixty of the trials were discarded because in those trials N'kisi either was silent or uttered things that were not key words, i.e., showed no signs of telepathy. A few other trials were discarded because the transcribers did not agree on what N'kisi said. In short, Sheldrake's statistical conclusions are based on the results of 71 of the trials. I'll let the reader decide whether it was proper to omit 40% of the data because the parrot didn't utter a word on the key word list during those trials. Some might argue that those sessions should be counted as misses and that by ignoring so much data where the parrot clearly did not indicate any sign of telepathy is strong evidence that Sheldrake was more interested in confirming his biases than in getting at the truth.
N'kisi's misses were listed at 94. Ten of the 23 hits were on the picture that corresponded to the word 'flower', which N'kisi uttered 23 times during the trials. The flower image, selected randomly, was used in 17 trials. The image corresponding to water was used in 10 of the trials. The bird said 'water' in twelve trials and got 2 hits. It seems oddly biased that almost one-third of the images and more than half the hits came from just 2 of the 19 pictures.
One of the peer reviewers thought that the fact that the flower word and picture played so heavy a role in the outcome that the paper's results were distorted and that the paper should not be published. The other reviewer accepted Sheldrake's observation that even if you throw out the flower data, you still get some sort of statistical significance. This may be true. However, since the bird allegedly had a vocabulary of some 950 words at the time of the test, omitting sessions where the bird said nothing or said something not on the key list, is unjustifiable. Furthermore, there is no evidence that it is reasonable to assume that when the parrot is by itself uttering words that it is trying to communicate telepathically with Morgana. Or are we to accept Sheldrake's assumption that the parrot turns his telepathic interest off and on, and it was on only when he uttered a word on the key list? That assumption is no more valid that Morgana's belief that the telepathy doesn't work as well when she makes an effort to send a telepathic message to her parrot. In any case, I wonder why Sheldrake didn't do a baseline study, where the parrot was videotaped for two-minutes at a time while Morgana was taking an aromatherapy bath or meditating or doing something unrelated to the key word pictures. Had he made several hundred such clips, he could then have randomly selected 71 and compared them to the 71 clips he used for his analysis. If there was no significant difference between the randomly selected clips and the ones that emerged during the experiment, then the telepathy hypothesis would not be supported. On the other hand, if he found a robust statistically significant difference, then the telepathy hypothesis would be supported. I suggest he do something along these lines when he attempts to replicate his parrot telepathy test.
In some trials, N’kisi repeated a given key word. For example, in one trial N’kisi said ‘‘phone’’ three times, and in another he said ‘‘flower’’ ten times, and in the tabulation of data the numbers of times he said these words are shown in parentheses as: phone (3); flower (10). For most of the statistical analyses, repetitions were ignored, but in one analysis the numbers of words that were said more than once in a given trial were compared statistically with those said only once for both hits and misses. For each trial, the key word or words represented in the photograph were tabulated. Some images had only one key word, but others had two or more. For example, a picture of a couple hugging in a pool of water involved two key words, ‘‘water’’ and ‘‘hug.’’ (Sheldrake and Morgana 2003)
He calculated 51 hits and 126 misses when repetitions were included. I'm not going to bother with any more detail because by now the overall picture should be clear. Once the statisticians went to work on the data, they were able to provide support for the claim that the data were consistent with the telepathic hypothesis. But nowhere in Sheldrake's paper can I find a claim that the parrot did three times better than expected by chance. In any case, I have to agree with the editor who published Sheldrake's parrot paper: the results have a statistical significance that is less than compelling. However, unlike that editor, my devout wish is that when such studies as these are published in the future, responsible journalists continue to ignore them and recognize them for the rubbish they are. On the other hand, if you happen to think your parrot is psychic, drop Dr. Sheldrake a line. He's set up a page just for you.
Sheldrake has responded to this article. His comments and my responses are posted here.
books and articles
new Grey parrots use reasoning where monkeys and dogs can’t "Christian Schloegl and his team at the University of Vienna, let six parrots choose between two containers, one containing a nut. Both containers were shaken, one eliciting a rattling sound and the other nothing. The parrots preferred the container that rattled, even if only the empty container was shaken....Thus, grey parrots seem to possess ape-like reasoning skills...." [/new]
Last updated 16-Aug-2012
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Choosing Your First Telescope
Every year millions of people buy a telescope, but few know what to look for when making their purchase.
online telescope help guide.. Or if you want something that you can print out and read at your leisure, click here to download "What to Know Before You Buy" from SkyWatch 2010, our annual magazine, as a 2-megabyte PDF file.
Many (arguably most) good starter scopes cost $400 or more, but some superb choices are available for under $250. For some specific recommendations, read our review of Low-Cost Starter Scopes. But read this article first, so you'll understand the terminology in that review.
The telescope you want has two essentials: high-quality optics and a steady, smoothly working mount. And all other things being equal, big scopes show more and are easier to use than small ones, as we'll see below. But don't overlook portability and convenience the best scope for you is the one you'll actually use.
The most important characteristic of a telescope is its aperture the diameter of its light-gathering lens or mirror, often called the objective. Look for the telescope's specifications near its focuser, at the front of the tube, or on the box. The aperture's diameter (D) will be expressed either in millimeters or, less commonly, in inches (1 inch equals 25.4 mm). As a rule of thumb, your telescope should have at least 2.8 inches (70 mm) aperture and preferably more.
Avoid telescopes that are advertised by their magnification especially implausibly high powers like 600×. For most purposes, a telescope's maximum useful magnification is 50 times its aperture in inches (or twice its aperture in millimeters) . So you'd need a 12-inch scope to get a decent image at 600× And even then, you'd need to wait for a night when the observing conditions are perfect.
You'll encounter three basic telescope designs.
• Reflectors gather light using a mirror at the rear of the main tube. For a given aperture, these are generally the least expensive type, but you'll need to adjust the optical alignment periodically especially if you bump it around a lot.
• Compound (or catadioptric) telescopes, which use a combination of lenses and mirrors, offer compact tubes and relatively light weight; two popular designs are called Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksutov-Cassegrains.
The objective's focal length (F or FL) is the key to determining the telescope's magnification ("power"). This is simply the objective's focal length divided by that of the eyepiece, which you'll find on its barrel. For example, if a telescope has a focal length of 500 mm and a 25-mm eyepiece, the magnification is 500/25, or 20x. Most telescopes come supplied with one or two eyepieces; you change the magnification by switching eyepieces with different focal lengths.
Your telescope will need something sturdy to support it. Many telescopes come conveniently packaged with tripods or mounts, though the tubes of smaller scopes often just have a mounting block that allows them to be attached to a standard photo tripod with a single screw. (Caution: A tripod that's good enough for taking your family snapshots may not be steady enough for astronomy.) Mounts designed specifically for telescopes usually forgo the single-screw attachment blocks in favor of larger, more robust rings or plates.
Some telescopes come with small motors to move them around the sky with the push of a keypad button. In the more advanced models of this type, often called "Go To" telescopes, a small computer is built into the hand control. Once you've entered the current date, time, and your location, the scope can point itself to, and track, thousands of celestial objects. Some "Go To"s let you choose a guided tour of the best celestial showpieces, complete with a digital readout describing what's known about each object.
But Go To scopes aren't for everyone the setup process may be confusing if you don't know how to find the bright alignment stars in the sky. And lower-priced Go To models come with smaller apertures than similarly priced, entry-level scopes that have no electronics.
A telescope can literally open your eyes to a universe of celestial delights. With a little care in selecting the right one, you'll be ready for a lifetime of exploring the night sky!
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Can You Train Your Pet Cat?
Yes, but it won't be easy.
A border collie named Chaser has been trained to recognize and respond to 1,022 nouns, according to a New York Times profile published last Monday. The extent of Chaser's vocabulary is astonishing, but it's no surprise that a dog could be trained to sit, stay, or fetch particular objects from under the couch. What about a cat? Is it possible to train your Tabby?
Yes, but it's slightly more difficult. Cats were domesticated about 9,000 years ago, and were originally used to hunt mice. It's likely they were selected for their solitary hunting abilities, not for any particular social acuity or inclination to follow instructions. (Dogs, on the other hand, were selected for those very traits.) That doesn't mean you can't train a cat; it just means they won't always respond to the same rewards as dogs. While some dogs are content with a pat on the head and a "good boy!" in exchange for proper behavior, cats typically work for food and might be slower to pick up new tricks. Even so, both species can be trained with the same methods. (The most common are positive reinforcement, clicker training, and targeting.) Cats can be trained to use a toilet bowl instead of a litter box, follow their owners at a command, or perform a high-five.
Dogs dohave larger brains than cats, both in absolute terms and relative to the size of their bodies. That feature may have evolved to help them meet the social demands of living in a pack. And a heightened sociability could in turn make them better at reading and responding to human facial expressions and commands.
If it's possible to train cats, why don't we do it more often? Cats are less of a bother than dogs when they misbehave. While a hyperactive canine might rip up your curtains and your couch, a problematic cat tends to be disobedient in more subtle ways—like waking you up at 5 a.m. for breakfast. Cats are also quieter and less likely to drool on your belongings or jump on strangers. When cats do develop behavioral problems, their owners are more likely to accept and ignore the issue, rather than embarking on a training protocol.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer
Explainer thanks, Christine Bellezza of the Cornell Feline Health Center, Nicholas Dodman of Tufts University, Sandra Sawchuk of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, and Carlo Siracusa of the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Hospital.
Photograph of a cat by Jupiterimages/Thinkstock.
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Dynamic nasopharyngoscopy (DN) is a simple method of:
The examination is performed with the patient lying on their back and under local anesthetic with topical Lidocaine that is sprayed onto the back of the throat and into the nasal passages. The flexible fiberoptic endoscope is introduced through the nose and advanced into the pharynx. Note is taken of any fixed obstructions such as a deviated septum, nasal polyps, and enlarged adenoids and tonsils. The tip of the endoscope is then positioned at the level of the hard palate and the patient is asked to perform a series of maneuvers.
Note is taken of the size and shape of the airway. This patient has a heart -shaped airway because of narrow insertion of the posterior tonsillar pillars and edema.
Note is taken of the degree of collapse that occurs when the patient attempts to inspire with their mouth closed and nostrils pinched shut.
|With jaw thrust
This simulates the wearing of a dental appliance that advances the mandible. This patient could use such a device if the overnight oximetry shows mild disease.
opening of the jaw
Opening the mouth to breathe relaxes the pharynx and promotes backward collapse of the tongue. This increases the likelihood of apnea.
Interpretation of the findings requires a detailed knowledge of the anatomy of the upper airway and a good understanding of the physical principles that determine why certain structures are stable and others are not.
Back to Dynamic Nasopharyngoscopy Page
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Culture has a special historical and social significance in Slovenia. It was primarily thanks to their culture and their common language of Slovene that the people of Slovenia were able to forge themselves into a nation and survive. Language and culture have for centuries compensated Slovenes for the lack of their own state and political institutions. Slovenia is one of those rare countries, if not the only country in the world, where a day of culture is a national holiday.
In honour of the poet
Slovenia’s national day of culture is 8 February, the anniversary of the death of its greatest poet, France Prešeren
, whose wonderful works from the first half of the 19th century are a supreme example of European romanticism. One such work is A Toast
, now Slovenia’s national anthem. The relevance of Prešeren’s poetry played a role in the creation of the first real national political programme, which helped to forge the Slovenian national identity. The annual Prešeren Prizes
are the highest awards for the most important and momentous achievements in culture.
Credit to the protestant
One of the most important foundations of Slovenian culture was established by another literary figure, the protestant pastor Primož Trubar
, who published the first book in Slovene in 1550. It was then that Slovene officially joined the family of European literary languages.
The power of verse and the written word
Literature also held a special place in Slovenian culture in the 20th century, when the playwright Ivan Cankar
, the poet Srečko Kosovel
, contemporary poets like Ciril Zlobec, Kajetan Kovič, Tomaž Šalamun
and Dane Zajc
and the writers Vitomil Zupan, Drago Jančar, Boris Pahor
and Lojze Kovačič
all left their mark. Many of their works have been translated into multiple European languages.
Further evidence of the importance of books in Slovenian culture is that Slovenia is ranked at the top of European countries in terms of the number of books published per head. In 2010, Ljubljana was selected by Unesco to be the World Book Capital. In 2012, Maribor was the European Capital of Culture
Pillars of culture
Slovenia has a very well-developed network of cultural institutions, organisations and associations, comparable with the wealthiest and most progressive countries in Europe. The Slovenian Philharmonic
is one of the oldest orchestras in Europe, with a history of more than 300 years.
There are professional opera and ballet companies
in Ljubljana and Maribor, and numerous professional theatre groups
, including Drama (Slovenia’s national theatre),
the Youth Theatre
and the Puppet Theatre
Cultural life is rich and varied at the museums, galleries and cultural centres, pride of place among which is taken by Cankarjev Dom
There are a host of top festivals in Slovenia, particularly in the summer: the Ljubljana Festival
at Križanke, the festival of early music in Brežice
, the Primorska Cultural Festival
and a series of cultural events under the aegis of Imago Sloveniae
. Maribor’s Lent Festival
is also a favourite.
There are 45 permanent galleries in Slovenia, and over 800 spaces where works of fine art are exhibited permanently or occasionally. The most important in Ljubljana are the Museum of Modern Art,
which focuses on modern works, and the National Gallery,
whose collection consists of older works. Impressionism
made Slovenian painting known throughout Europe in the first half of the 20th century, while the Ljubljana graphic school
was renowned after the Second World War.
There are five professional orchestras
in Slovenia, and a host of musicians who are famed outside the country. The largest concert halls are at the Cankarjev Dom
cultural and conference centre, which holds close to a thousand events each year.
Slovenia’s own brand of polka music reached its peak in the accordion and ensemble of Slavko Avsenik
, while the annual festival in Stična is a feast of choral singing
, and the France Marolt
folk group have performed their singing and dancing all over the world.
The contemporary thrill of classical music is the territory of the Slovenian Philharmonic, particularly its top musicians, flautist Irena Grafenauer
, pianist Dubravka Tomšič
and soprano Marjana Lipovšek.
Laibach have been a highly influential band in the last few decades in modern alternative music. The ethno-pop of Magnifico
has gained a rising international profile. The giants of Slovenian pop music are Vlado Kreslin
, while Slovenian DJs are welcome on global dancefloors, most notably DJ Umek.
Architecture is also a vital part of Slovenian culture. The most famous native architect, Jože Plečnik
, was a pioneer of modern Slovenian and European architecture of the 20th century. Ljubljana is famed for his work. Many of Plečnik’s students continued his legacy in the second half of the 20th century.
International cultural events
Each year Slovenia hosts a number of other events that are renowned further afield. To mention a few: the Exodos
dance festival in Ljubljana, the Ana De
setnica festival of street theatre, the PEN meeting
in Bled and the Vilenica
literary festival near Sežana.
In short, the range of cultural events, festivals, concerts and exhibitions in Slovenia is enough to satisfy the most demanding of guests.
The small size of the market means that many artistic and cultural activities in Slovenia enjoy significant support and subsidies from the government (approximately two-thirds of the requisite funding), and funding from local authorities. It is remarkable that less than 10% of cultural activities’ earnings come from the consumer, i.e. visitors to cultural events. The exception of course is the entertainment industry, notably pop and jazz, where the performers have to rely on their own ingenuity to earn their dues.
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History of the Somerville Fire Department
In 1838, Charlestown, MA authorities paid a sum of $400 to have a two-story wooden engine-house built at the corner of Washington and Prospect Streets (this area is property of Somerville today). In this engine-house, the "Mystic No. 6" was stored. Mystic No. 6 was not much more than a "tub" measuring three feet six inches long, by two feet wide. It consisted of an oblong wooden tank sheathed with metal, pistons which worked perpendicularly, and handsome lancewood brakes. It could not "draught" water, and all it threw was water which was poured into it by buckets. A law was enforced starting that year which required each household to have two buckets hung in their front hallway. When an alarm was sounded for a fire, each man was to run with his buckets to the fire location and lineup with the others to pass the buckets of water from a well or cistern to the men who operated Mystic No. 6.
In 1842, Somerville set off from Charlestown to become a town of its own. Mystic No. 6 was left as a legacy to Somerville and the engine's valuation of $50 was entered into the town's record books. All firemen at this time were volunteers and were paid a generous sum of $1.50 per year.
On November 12, 1849 town officials appropriated $1,438.75 for the purchase of a "good and sufficient fire engine". The first-class modern suction machine , one of the best ever made by the celebrated Hunneman & Co. of Roxbury arrived about January 1, 1850 and was dubbed "Somerville No. 1". It had six and a half inch cylinders, folding brakes and all of the latest improvements. On January 15th of that same year, Nathan Tufts Jr. was named the first Chief Fire Engineer and George Brastow was named the clerk by the town's selectmen. The first fire that the new department responded to was the burning of Johnson's barn which was located on School St. toward Union Square.
In 1853, the members of the fire department requested a pay raise from $1.50 to $12.00 per year. When the board of selectmen refused to consider it, the department went on strike. The town fathers yielded, however, and the strike was short-lived. This was also the year that Mystic No. 6 was sold for the amount of $33.00 and it was taken to East Boston and broken up for old junk. It was also in 1853 that the first flagstaff in town was erected by the firemen in Union Square.
The engine-house was destroyed by fire on December 24, 1855 but Somerville No. 1 was saved. A new brick building was erected on the same plot of land in 1856 for a cost of $5,000.
The first report made by fire engineers was made by Chief Samuel H. Gooding, in 1862, for the preceeding year, in which he states that the department consists of one engine company, "whose membership has been reduced by members being in the army." He recommends the placing of larger wheels and a "stouter beam" on the engine, also the purchase of a hook and ladder truck for one horse to carry the ladders distributed about town which can not be found when wanted: to quote his own words, "they being out among the neighbors generally." He also recommended the purchase of an extra hose carriage. There were 8 fires that year, with a loss of about $3,300. Of the 800 feet of hose, 200 feet were good, 300 feet were fair and 300 feet were poor. There was also 6 ladders, 1 hook, 6 reservoirs and 3 hydrants.
In April of 1863, an amount of $300 was appropriated for a hook and ladder truck. One was finally purchased in September of that year for the amount of $350 but it was not formally manned at that time. In April 1865, a sum not to exceed $4,000 was appropriated to purchase a hose carriage and horse, and provide a suitable place to locate it in East Somerville. In June of 1865, engineers purchased a second-hand hose carriage formerly used by Gen. John E. Wool Hose Co. of Troy, NY for the sum of $600 and it went into service on October 1st of that year as "Liberty Hose Co. 1". The company disbanded on July 9th, 1866 due to internal dissention and fighting, but a new company was formed within a few days, taking the name of "John E. Wool."
In March of 1866, the selectmen and engineers were instructed to purchase a steam fire engine, horses and all appurtenances thereto not to exceed in cost $10,000 and to locate the same. It arrived on May 26th and occupied Hand Engine 1 Station in Union Square. Hose No. 1 Station was built on Webster Street in East Somerville that same year. Winter Hill Hose Co. 2 was organized in 1869 and occupied a station on Marshall Street in 1872.
A new station was erected at the corner of Highland Avenue and Walnut Street (the Somerville Public Library now occupies this site) in 1871 and Engine Co. 1 was relocated from the station in Union Square to this new station on July 20th, 1871. George H. Foster Hose Co. 3 was organized when Engine Co. 1 was transferred to its new station , and with Hook & Ladder Co. No. 1 , which was organized in 1870, it occupied the station that Engine 1 vacated in Union Square.
The first Silby engine owned by the town was purchased in 1873 and it was also that year in which the "John E. Wool" was sold to the town of Everett for the amount of $400 and later went out of service and was returned to its original company in Troy, NY. It was also in 1873 that the George Brastow Hose Co. No. 4 was organized and assigned to a building at the corner of Highland Avenue and Grove Street. It was at this point in time that every apparatus in the city (Somerville became a city on January 1, 1872) was equipped with horses.
The Gamewell fire alarm telegraph system was established in 1874 at a cost of $34,500 and it went into service on June 17th of 1874. The first box alarm pulled in the city occured on June 25th, 1874 when Box #34 was pulled on the corner of Broadway opposite Marshall Street.
In 1874 a new ladder truck was bought and the Winter Hill Company became the Robert A. Vinal Hook & Ladder Company. Chief James R. Hopkins declined to allow the new ladder truck to be named for himself. In 1877, the power to remove men was placed in the hands of the Mayor and the Aldermen. In 1885 the department became all uniformed.
Hose Co. No. 5 was organized on August 15th, 1889 and placed into service in September of 1889 at a brick station located at the corner of Somerville Avenue and Lowell Street. A huge Central Fire Station was built in 1894 at Highland Avenue and Medford Street. The new station sheltered Engine 1, a hose wagon and the new chemical engine A. It also included accommodations for a combined aerial-ladder truck and a water tower. The second floor of the station was used for sleeping rooms, a recreation room, hayloft, workroom and the chief's quarters. The third floor was used exclusively as the headquarters of the of the fire-alarm telegraph system. The station which had stood at the corner of Highland Avenue and Walnut Street was torn down. Also in 1894, a station was built on Highland Avenue near Cedar Street to house two pieces of apparatus. A truck was bought shortly thereafter and Hook & Ladder Co. No. 2 was organized to operate out of the new station.
In 1896 a new fire station, designed to accommodate three pieces of apparatus, was erected at the corner of Broadway and Cross Street. To this building Hose Company No. 1 was transferred from the old wooden building on Webster Street and reorganized into an engine company. Relief Engine Co. 2 was also assigned to this new station.
The station at Teele Square was erected shortly before the turn of the Century, and covers all of the territory west of Willow Avenue.
Since 1900, the department has become completely motorized.
In 1918 the Somerville Fire Dept. joins the International Association of Fire Fighters as Local 76.
The above histories were written by John C. McNally, William E. Brigham & H.H. Easterbrook. Special thanks to Somerville Firefighter Bob "Monty" Doherty.
Page Last Updated: Mar 05, 2012 (12:11:59)
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World Health Organization
WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and stan...
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia
Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in some population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time.
Social Determinants of Health
Raphael, Dennis (ed.)
The social determinants of health are summarized and analyzed by over 30 medical and social academics.
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Curtain Call, Death, Legacy
Though Washington had accumulated many enemies over his eight years as president, when he retired all was forgotten. People hailed him as a hero. He attended the inauguration of the new president, John Adams, in a simple black coat. He sat in the corner. Adams was dressed splendidly, ready to take office, but no one seemed too interested in Adams: all eyes were on Washington.
Washington returned home to Mount Vernon to find, again, that it had declined in his absence. He went to work trying to fix it up, and quickly made it profitable again. Yet he lacked the energy he used to have. He also seemed to lose some of his judgment; where he had always been polite and gentlemanly before, he now sometimes became violently angry. He realized that his mind was deteriorating.
President Adams was soon faced with an emergency: war with France seemed imminent. Congress passed a resolution to raise an army. There was no question as to who would lead it. Washington reluctantly took command. Soon, however, he fell to bickering with Adams over who would be his generals. His behavior was erratic. Fortunately the threat of war passed, and before Washington had a chance to make a bigger fool out of himself the army disbanded.
In his final days, Washington was lonely. Martha was ill and could not provide much company. Many of his best friends were dead or had turned on him. He sensed the end was near. It came on December 12, 1799. Washington had been out riding in poor weather and returned feeling ill. Soon he was bedridden. His doctors bled him, a practice common at the time, which only made him weaker. On December 14, he died.
The entire nation mourned. The new country had never seen such an outpouring of grief. Nearly every one of Washington's former enemies came forward to affirm the man's greatness. Henry Lee, a fellow Virginia planter, spoke the words at Washington's funeral that have since become famous. Washington, he said, was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
Even in death Washington managed to be extraordinary. In his will, he ordered that his slaves be freed and commanded that elderly slaves receive a pension from his estate. The children were to be educated in local schools. This was radical: the whole economy and society of the south depended on slavery. Famous patriots such as Jefferson and Madison talked loudly of freedom while owning slaves, but none of these men freed their slaves in life or death–only Washington.
Washington's old age was a tragic time for him. He felt isolated from his friends and from the society in which he had been raised. By the end of his life, he had relatively little in common with his fellow planters. He had seen the country and was convinced of the importance of the federal government. He sympathized with Hamilton's plans to build a powerful economy based on trade and manufacturing in addition to agriculture. He enjoyed the fine food and intelligent people he found in cities such as Philadelphia.
Most significantly, Washington came to doubt the culture he had come from. He grew to hate slavery. He distrusted Jefferson's ideal of an agrarian society because he recognized that such a society relied on slaves. He hoped for slavery to end and saw that it would ultimately divide the North and South. He even admitted in private that if the North and South should separate, he would go to the North.
With his belief in an American future involving a strong national government, Washington was becoming a Federalist. He resisted the name and tried to stay distant from the two developing political parties. In reality, though, he was on the side of the Federalists and always had been. Though he ultimately failed to stay "above politics" as he thought the president should, he succeeded in making the presidency a legitimate office. By the time he left office he had many enemies, but no one called for the office of president to be changed or abandoned. This fact is remarkable given how many Americans feared a strong leader before Washington took office.
Though he angered many people as president for supporting Hamilton's pro-capital and pro-British policies, Washington's reputation remained strong. After his death this reputation grew to mythic proportions. Americans soon made it a custom to place portraits of Washington in their homes and speak of him reverently, as though he were a god. Myths (like the one about the cherry tree, which of course never happened) sprang up everywhere. The press would routinely compare political leaders to Washington, always unfavorably. He was the gold standard of heroism. He has become such a hero, in fact, that today many Americans find it difficult to relate to Washington. He seems huge but strangely faceless, much like the monument that honors him in Washington, D.C. This is appropriate in a way. Washington wouldn't necessarily have wanted us to know his as a man, but rather as a leader.
Readers' Notes allow users to add their own analysis and insights to our SparkNotes—and to discuss those ideas with one another. Have a novel take or think we left something out? Add a Readers' Note!
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IT security is, generally, defined as a defensive approach to protect a company and its assets from unauthorized access by an intruder. IT security efforts include network security appliances, HoneyPots, robust authentication, limiting authorization to least necessary privileges, as well as other perimeter security defenses. However, these approaches do not provide definitive protection of the company's most valuable asset, its data, because a single intrusion could result in sensitive data being compromised. Additionally, in today's workplace culture the disgruntled employee may be as much of a threat as any external threat.
Data encryption is a direct response to internal and external security threats that may also meet compliance regulations. Encryption provides strong security for data "at-rest"; in our case, the data stored in the database, but to be effective should be implemented as a part of a broader security plan. There are many issues involved with the implementation of encryption, details that require decisions and actions to ensure the success of the implementation and the security of the data. This document will discuss the issues associated with database encryption implemented using SQL Server's native Transparent Database Encryption (TDE) mechanism.
Encryption has been integral to human history beginning with the Babylonian use of Intaglio other historical examples include the Caesar Cipher, Scytale Transposition Cipher, Enigma, and even JimKryptos sculpture. Throughout history our society has enjoyed the ability to protect information using cryptographic methods including steganography, microdots, invisible ink, digital watermarks, and encryption which may be defined as the conversion of data so as to keep its meaning private. As the amount of sensitive data collected by commercial entities continues to grow the regulatory requirements for protecting the sensitive data will become more robust; meeting the regulatory requirements will necessarily require the continued use of data encryption methods.
Encryption requires the application of an algorithm to transform the target data into a form that is unusable to anyone that does not have access to the encryption process used. In practical terms encryption applies a cryptographic algorithm with a "key" to the target data producing the encrypted form of the data which cannot be accessed without the key used to encrypt the data. The two primary forms of key encryption are symmetric and asymmetric which are distinguished by the number of keys used in the encryption / decryption process. Symmetric encryption uses a single key while asymmetric encryption uses a pair of keys generally referred to as public and private keys.
While asymmetric encryption appears ideal for implementation because only the public key need ever be shared there are disadvantages with regard to performance. A sampling of asymmetric algorithms includes RSA, DSA, ELGamal, ECDSA, and XTR. Figure 1 demonstrates the asymmetric encryption process.
Figure 1 Asymmetric Key Encryption / Decryption Process
Symmetric algorithms require a single key for both encryption and decryption which allows for high-performance; however, with this approach the strength of the encryption is dependent on the security of the key. Common symmetric algorithms include AES/Rijndael, Blowfish, DES, Triple DES, Serpent, and IDEA to name only a few. Figure 2 demonstrates the symmetric encryption process.
Figure 2 Symmetric Key Encryption Process
Both symmetric and asymmetric encryption approaches are vulnerable to brute force attacks and cryptanalysis. Brute force is an attack during which every possible permutation of the key value is attempted. Cryptanalysis, on the other hand, applies computational techniques to circumvent the encryption. In general, the use of sufficiently long keys will mitigate these attacks.
In summary, a symmetric key algorithm is fast but less secure than an asymmetric algorithm. Another approach is a hybrid wherein a symmetric key is used to encrypt the data while an asymmetric key is used to encrypt the symmetric key. It may be important to know in order to maintain perspective that there is only one encryption algorithm that is impossible to crack, One-Time Pad (OTP), any other algorithm may be broken given sufficient time and / or computer resources.
Security concerns, in general, and encryption, specifically, are new concepts for most IT professionals; therefore, a Glossary of Security / Encryption Terms is included as an appendix for reference.
Overview of Transparent Database Encryption
The primary benefit of Transparent Database Encryption (TDE) is the ability to encrypt data without affecting any application that uses the data while providing security for the entire database. TDE is implemented at the database-level, unlike cell-level encryption TDE does not require modification to applications or database column data types; furthermore, database-level encryption allows for higher performance than cell-level encryption. However, TDE may allow more data leakage because encrypted data is decrypted when read into the buffer pool; therefore, the data is not protected if the operating system writes data from memory to disk during paging operations, or during hibernation, or memory dumps, nor is the data protected while in memory.
Database encryption is achieved by leveraging the Data Protection API (DPAPI) in Windows® which protects the Service Master Key (SMK) which protects the Database Master Key (DMK) which is used to protect the certificate or asymmetric keys which are used to protect the Database Encryption Key (DEK). These dependencies create a security chain from the operating system to the data eliminating user interaction thus strengthening security. The relationships and dependencies between keys is represented in Figure 3 below:
Figure 3 SQL Server encryption key hierarchy with TDE and EKM (Source: BOL - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc278098.aspx)
The hierarchy of keys in TDE is protected from the DPAPI to the DEK allowing the server to manage encryption and decryption automatically. The DMK and the certificate are stored in the MASTER database while the DEK is stored in the user database. This hierarchy and the key management chain provide TDE the capability to transparently encrypt and decrypt the database.
The process for encrypting a database is conceptually simple:
- Create a Master Key
- Obtain an Authentication Certificate
- Create DEK
- Enable TDE on the database
However, significant complexity will be introduced if the database encryption strategy is undertaken without proper planning that addresses important implementation issues. Those issues are discussed in the following section.
The level of security necessary to protect the database should be documented during the planning phase. Individually and in combination the following encryption mechanisms are available to secure the database:
- Encrypting File System (EFS)
- Transparent Database Encryption (TDE)
Discussion of the benefits and performance implications of each mechanism and their combinations is beyond the scope of this paper.
Data encryption must address two equally important issues: encryption technology and cryptographic key (key) management. Encryption technology provides for variable granularity of data protection, performance, and integration with existing applications, as well as ease of implementation and management. However, the success of the selected encryption strategy may depend most on key management policies and processes. Key management issues include: key access, key storage, and cryptographic algorithm. Key management is one of many important issues that must be considered when planning the encryption project.
The important issues to consider during the planning phase of the encryption project are listed below:
- Encryption Algorithm : DES, Triple DES, TRIPLE_DES_3KEY, RC2, RC4, 128-bit RC4, DESX, 128-bit AES, 192-bit AES, and 256-bit AES
- Key Management : Key Storage, Hardware Security Module (HSM), Key Scheduling, Key Availability / Mobility / Security
- Performance Impact. Encryption / Decryption - Microsoft claims 3-5%; however, independent tests indicate 6-12%..
- TempDB Encryption - Encryption of any one DB will encrypt TempDB.
- Transaction Log is encrypted.
- Log Shipping Implementation Changes - Encrypted database log shipping requires the recipient database to possess the key in order to apply the logs.
- Backup and Recovery Plan Changes - Encrypted databases cannot be recovered to a different instance without the key.
- Disaster Recovery Plan Changes - Encrypted databases cannot be recovered to a different instance without the key.
- Increased Disk Space Requirements - No SQL Server native backup compression. Third party tools may be available; however, in general, encrypted data cannot be significantly compressed.
- TDE operates during I/O; therefore, any data written to disk outside of the buffer pool is not protected
- No Support for FILESTREAM data-type
The diagram in Figure 4 represents a nominal encryption project planning process with each major area of consideration represented. The end result of the planning process is to produce a document detailing the decisions made that address the issues related to encrypting the database.
Figure 4 Encryption Planning Process
A comprehensive IT security policy provides a layered defense against threats to the system. However, even the most thorough perimeter network and physical defenses do not obviate the vulnerability of plaintext data stored in databases. Data encryption provides a means to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access as a part of a coordinated IT security policy that includes network security, robust authentication and authorization, as well as other physical security considerations. SQL Server and Windows® provide several mechanisms for the protection of data either at the file, database, or data levels.
Transparent database encryption (TDE) is a new technology available in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition which provides a simplified the data encryption option. TDE is a database-level encryption mechanism that reduces the implementation complexity by negating the need to modify the data and / or the client applications. However, the benefits of performance and simplicity are balanced by TDE's potential for data leakage; therefore, for the most sensitive data TDE alone may not suffice as a data security strategy.
Any data protection strategy must weigh the costs and benefits of implementation to arrive at a usable solution that meets the security requirements defined by the business. TDE's protection of sensitive data in low to moderate threat environments may be sufficient for some business requirements while highly sensitive data or data in high threat environments will require the combination of TDE with other encryption mechanisms such as cell-level encryption, EFS, or BitLocker.
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It's December and Geminid meteor time, skywatchers!
Space Weather News for Dec 13, 2012
GEMINID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is passing through a stream of debris from "rock comet" 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. Around the world, observers are counting as many as 60 shooting stars per hour, a number which could increase sharply as the shower peaks on the night of Dec 13-14. Wherever you live, the best time to look is during the dark hours between local midnight and sunrise.
Visit SpaceWeather News for sky maps, photos, and updates.
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What is the
|What does "Bypass Surgery" mean?
Bypass Surgery can be performed on any artery in the body, but most
often involves the coronary arteries (the arteries that supply blood to
the heart muscle itself). During Bypass Surgery, a graft vein or artery is
taken from a healthy blood vessel in the body. The graft is then
surgically attached above and below an obstructed or poorly functioning
artery. After surgery, the blood will flow thru the graft vessel, avoid or
"bypass" the blocked vessel, and provide oxygen and nutrients necessary
for survival to the area of tissue beyond the blockage.
Why is the doctor performing this surgery?
To bypass, or go around, the obstruction caused by a coronary (heart)
artery filled with a clot or with plaque (Atherosclerosis). If the
obstruction is not bypassed, the heart muscle beyond the obstruction is
denied oxygen and nutrients leading to heart damage (heart attack or chest
There are two types of Coronary Artery Bypass Surgeries (CABGs) routinely
- On Pump - On Pump CABG is also known as "Traditional Bypass
Surgery". The pumping and oxygenation function of the heart is taken over by a
heart-lung machine during the surgery, and medications are given that briefly
paralyze the heart (cardioplegia). This way, the heart is completely at rest
while the surgeon performs the bypass surgery.
- Off Pump/Beating Heart -
Off Pump CABG is also known as "Beating Heart Bypass Surgery" and is another method of Bypass Surgery. Surgeons at
St. Mary perform nearly 80 percent of CAGB procedures off-pump. A heart-lung
machine is not used, and the heart is not stopped with medications. Instead,
the heart continues to perform its pumping and oxygenation functions while the
surgeon works. The surgeon stabilizes just the portion of the heart where the
bypass is needed, while the remainder of the heart continues to function
normally. According to the Journal of the American Heart Association, off-pump
bypass, in the appropriate patients, is as safe and effective as standard
on-pump coronary bypass surgery, and many healthcare professionals, including
our surgeons believe it may reduce the risk of stroke, bleeding and renal
failure. Off-pump bypass is not for everyone, and there is no long-term data
available about outcomes…yet. However, it is a highly effective surgical
option which you can discuss with your doctor.
There are four sources used during bypass surgery for the healthy graft blood
- Endoscopic Vein Harvesting - The saphenous vein in the leg is the
most common vein used as a bypass graft. Traditionally, the saphenous vein was
obtained via a long incision in the leg, from groin to ankle. Contrary to
popular perception, this usually presents the highest degree of
post-procedural pain. This new endoscopic technique requires only two or three
1-inch long incisions in the leg. An endoscope connected to a video camera is
then inserted into the smaller incisions and the saphenous vein is removed
with far less scarring and trauma. This technique is only available in select
centers throughout the US.
- Arterial Bypass - There are several arteries that can be used as
grafts for bypass surgery, but the most common is the left internal mammary
artery (LIMA). The right internal mammary artery (RIMA) may also be used as a
graft. These arteries are accessed thru the same chest incision used to access
the heart. Occasionally, the radial (in the arm) or the gastroepiploic (near
the stomach) arteries may be used, each accessed thru separate incisions.
- Sutureless Anastomic Device - On occasion, surgeons use a
sutureless device, which can be used for the part of a vein graft that is
attached to the aorta. The saphenous vein is loaded onto a device that is
inserted into a small hole the surgeon has cut in the patient's aorta. He or
she then pushes a button, releasing a tiny web of wires, which unfold to form
a star-shaped rivet. Your doctor can determine if this is an option for you.
- Donor Saphenous Vein - This is a vein that has been cryopreserved
and stored in a tissue bank. It is blood type specific for the patient.
Where is the surgery performed?
Both On-Pump and Off-Pump/Beating Heart surgeries are performed in the
Operating Room (OR), and under general anesthesia.
How long does this surgery take?
The length of time surgery takes will vary based on the number of vessels
being bypassed, the graft location, On-Pump vs. Off-Pump/Beating Heart
procedure, the patient's associated medical problems, etc, but usually an
On-Pump or Off-Pump/Beating Heart surgery will take between 3-6
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A hernia occurs when the contents of the abdomen (usually part of the small intestine) push through a weak point or tear the thin muscular wall of the belly, which holds the abdominal organs in place.
A femoral hernia is a bulge in the upper part of the thigh near the groin.
Femorocele; Enteromerocele; Crural hernia
Causes, incidence, and risk factors:
Most of the time, there is no clear cause of a hernia. Some hernias may be present at birth (congenital), but are not noticed until later in life.
Some factors that contribute to the development of a hernia include:
- Chronic constipation
- Chronic cough
- Heavy lifting
- Straining to urinate because of an enlarged prostate
Femoral hernias tend to occur more often in women than in men.
You may see a bulge in the upper thigh just below the groin.
Most femoral hernias cause no symptoms. There may be some groin discomfort that is worse when you stand, lift heavy objects, or strain.
Sometimes, the first symptoms are sudden groin pain, abdominal pain, nausea, or vomiting. This may mean that the intestine within the hernia is blocked. This is an emergency.
Signs and tests:
The best way to tell if there is a hernia is to have your health care provider perform a physical exam.
If there is any doubt about the exam findings, an ultrasound or CT scan may be helpful.
Treatment depends on the symptoms present with the hernia.
If you feel sudden pain in your groin, a piece of intestine may be stuck in the hernia (called an incarcerated hernia). This needs treatment right away in a hospital emergency room, and you may need emergency surgery.
When you have chronic discomfort from a femoral hernia, talk to your health care provider about treatment choices.
- Hernias often get larger with time, and they do not go away on their own.
- Femoral hernias are more commonly incarcerate compared to other types of hernias.
Your surgeon may recommend femoral hernia repair surgery to avoid a possible medical emergency.
If you do not have surgery right away:
- Increase your fiber intake and drink fluids to avoid constipation.
- Lose weight if you are overweight.
- See your health care provider if you have trouble urinating (men).
- Use proper lifting techniques.
The chances of a femoral hernia coming back after surgery are about low.
If the intestine or other tissue becomes stuck, a portion of the intestine may need to be removed.
Calling your health care provider:
Call your health care provider or local emergency number (911) or go to the emergency room right away if:
- You suddenly develop pain in the hernia and the hernia cannot be pushed back into the abdomen using gentle pressure.
- You develop nausea, vomiting, or abdominal pain.
- Your hernia becomes red, purple, dark, or discolored.
Call your health care provider for an appointment or advice if you have a bulge in the upper thigh next to the groin.
Malangoni MA, Rosen MJ. Hernias. In: Townsend CM Jr., Beauchamp RD, Evers BM, Mattox KL, eds. Sabiston Textbook of Surgery. 19th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2012:chap 46.
|Review Date: 8/17/2012|
Reviewed By: Linda J. Vorvick, MD, Medical Director and Director of Didactic Curriculum, MEDEX Northwest Division of Physician Assistant Studies, Department of Family Medicine, UW Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington; and Joshua Kunin, MD, Consulting Colorectal Surgeon, Zichron Yaakov, Israel. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Inc.
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Call 911 for all medical emergencies. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. © 1997-
A.D.A.M., Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
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Barack Obama speaks of the time before the civil war, when the founding fathers made the declaration of independence. The declarations of independence were good, but not perfect, it had been left unfinished. The great question of slavery wasn’t properly answered. But separation isn’t over; Obama wants this generation to keep fighting for equal rights among gender, creed and color. Obamas tells about his past, how he grew up with his white grandparents, in a very poor neighborhood, but still went to one of the best schools in America.
The texts main themes are separation and hope. Through the speech Barack Obama tires to give the American people the hope, that all can reach “the American dream”, if they are willing to work for it, and change the society, for an America there is open to all races and beliefs. The second theme separation is important for Obama because, America has become more isolated among races and beliefs, even though America is a “melting pot” of different cultures. He wants to stop labels like majority and minority to be used, to describe a person’s place in society. He enhances his message by telling about his own childhood, and family, because he was raised with his white grandparents, in a very poor part of America, and still went to some of the best schools on America, which at the time he went to them, were the majority of the students at the finest schools white. He was a black man, who grew up with white people, in a black neighborhood.
He communicates his message about tolerance mainly using ethos. He tells us about his childhood, where he grew up in a multicultural society. That makes us connect to him, and we begin to think, that he has a point, because he been in the good and bad part of America. Therefore he must know what he is talking about, which also makes the mode of persuasion logos, because he speaks to our logic, by using his own childhood as an excellent argument. And last... [continues]
Cite This Essay
(2013, 01). Barack Obama: a More Perfect Union. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 01, 2013, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Barack-Obama-A-More-Perfect-Union-1338610.html
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Are you entangled in difficult relationships
or painful emotions? Do you suffer from childhood trauma? Do you suffer from your
parents' drama, your partner's demands, your boss's moods? Systemic Solutions can
help you untangle your life and reclaim your freedom.
Delay, Prevent and Reverse Aging
People are born with an energy for living that, unless
continuously restored, will fade with age. After about age 25, unless care
is taken to replenish energy, many people stop growing up and begin growing
old. Aging is optional and controllable for most motivated people, and
degeneration may be delayed, and, in some cases, reversed.
Degenerated body tissues are unlikely to be replaced,
except perhaps by major surgery. The degeneration of aged tissues is far
easier to prevent than to repair.
Aging & Life Coaching
The deterioration of bodily functions that accompany old
age is often considered a one-way road towards suffering and death. Although
many theories explain one or two aspects of aging; no single theory explains all
aging phenomena. Yet many changes associated with old age are not from natural
aging - but from diseases which occur more frequently with increased age. With
appropriate care, people can delay, prevent many of the problems of old age,
and even reverse the aging process.
Systemic Coaching can help you delay and prevent your
fragmentation and loss of mental resources associated with ageing.
As time passes, cellular damage accumulates and impairs the
function of a tissue. If the damage interferes with metabolism, whole organs
may malfunction. An example of this is adult-onset diabetes, which can often
be controlled by diet and exercise.
One theory of aging assumes that the life span of a cell or
organism is genetically determined. Another theory of aging assumes that cell
death is the result of the formation of enzymes that do not work efficiently.
Yet another theory assumes that aging is due to the gradual accumulation of
mutant cells that do not perform normally. (The natural mutation may be
increased dramatically by toxins, radiations and carcinogens associated with
Diseases of Old Age
Old Age & the Cardiovascular system
The heart changes with advancing age, gradually losing
muscle, and reducing in performance. Heart diseases are the biggest cause of
death after age 65.
- The heart does not contract as rapidly in older people.
In response to exercise, the heart can double or triple the amount of blood
pumped, although the maximum output diminishes with age.
- Arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) is a
progressive disorder and is present in most people by middle age,
and increases markedly with age.
- Blood vessels become less elastic with age, with a
progressive thickening of the walls of blood vessels. These changes may
increase blood pressure, increasing the work of the heart.
Old Age & Digestion
The overall digestion of sugar, proteins, vitamins, and minerals are similar to young people. Most nutritional deficiencies can be avoided if the diet assures all nutritional elements. Deficiencies are most likely to develop from poor eating habits, such as excessive sugars and refined flour. The loss of teeth in elderly people is often a result of long-term neglect.
Old Age & the Nervous system
Human behavior requires the brain to integrate information from the eye and ear, skin and internal organs. There is only a slight loss of brain cells in old age, however, brain cells are extremely sensitive to oxygen deficiency. Consequently, it is likely that loss of brain cells results from heart disease, which reduces oxygen delivery to the brain.
Old Age & Vision
From about age 50 there is an accelerated decline in the ability to discriminate detail, usually compensated for by spectacles and increased illumination. Aging reduces the ability to focus the eyes for viewing near objects, so that distant objects can be seen more clearly than close objects.
Sensitivity to darkness and glare is also greater in the old than in the young, and the incidence of eye disease, such as glaucoma and cataracts, increases with age.
A rare childhood disease is characterized by many aspects of aging, such as baldness and thin skin. Children with this disease rarely usually die of old age - as teenagers. Premature aging is associated with lifestyle - such as sunlight, smoking, alcohol and overeating.
Causes of Aging
People exposed to hard radiation die younger, although the only definite effect of continuous irradiation throughout life is cancer. Diseases such as leukemia increase after irradiation. Natural radioactivity in the body, from the Earth and from cosmic rays, are not major contributors to aging, but increase the incidence of cancer.
Many organisms live longer at low temperatures. A rate-of-living theory holds that an organism's life span depends on critical substances that are used faster at higher temperatures. Some aging may occur as a result of heat destruction of proteins, but this does not seems to be a strong contributing factor.
The psychological features of aging are impaired short-term memory and longer reaction times. Yet some aged people become fearful and depressed, withdraw from social contact, or act like children to their own children. Some aged people commit suicide or passively invite death with self-destructive, unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Elderly people can acquire new information and remember it as well as the young. Age differences in learning increase with the difficulty of the material to be learned. People who “age successfully” often maintain their mental alertness by continuing to learn and by social contacts with younger people.
Stress . Depression . Suicide . Anxiety
Parenthood and Aging
Human life, including old age and death, is focused on successfully creating and raising children. Old age is linked to the reproductive process. Although the onset of old age is gradual, without specific systemic or environmental cause; an early manifestation of age is a decline in sexual performance.
The proportional contribution of an individual to a family or community diminishes as the number of living children increases. This implies an optimum number of children that reflects the survival of those children to maturity. In many developing countries, the number of living children is proportional to the food supply. Before medical advances, an optimum number of children would balance those who could be expected to die from disease. In modern industrial countries, the optimum number of children reflects the beliefs and values of the parents.
Children, and later grandchildren, provide a natural focus and purpose for older people. In many cultures, there is a special relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. The children often gain indulgent "second parents", while most grandparents enjoy caring for their children's children.
Advantages of Aging
In most traditional cultures, the elders represented the knowledge of the community, and were the teachers of the young. In Western cultures, old people are often seen as liabilities, and inexperienced young adults teach "academic subjects" instead of the wisdom of life experience. If older relatives are perceived to limit the freedom of the young; then "old folks homes" may be perceived
Older people tend to have more time and patience, acting
as family and community mentors. They have seen more of life; they have
solved more problems and they are not so easily shocked. They have seen
birth and death, health and disease. They have a perspective of joy and suffering - of
life and death - that younger people cannot easily imagine.
Consult your physician about any opinions or recommendations
about medical symptoms or other medical questions.
Do you want relationship coaching or
systemic coach training?
We can train you to coach individuals, partners and teams to resolve a wide
range of emotional, educational and relationship challenges.
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2003-2009 All rights reserved
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Swedish NGOs reported 65
antisemitic incidents in 2004, mostly cases of harassment, but also 4 of
physical assault. In a report rating intolerance among students in relation to
Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and immigrants, the Living History Forum found a
high degree of tolerance toward the Jewish minority in Sweden.
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
Sweden has a Jewish population of
about 18,000, or 0.2 percent, out of a general population of 9 million. The
majority, approximately 10,000, live in the larger cities – Stockholm,
Göteborg and Malmö. Smaller Jewish communities can be found in Boras, Uppsala, Norrköping and Helsingborg. The various communities are independent,
but linked through the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities.
A Stockholm-based magazine, Judisk
Krönika, appears bi-monthly, as well as Tachless, the magazine
of the Jewish congregation. Shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter) is
prohibited and kosher meat is imported from abroad. According to a report of the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency, while they saw no obstacles to the performance of ritual
slaughter, the laws made it impossible for the time being.
POLITICAL organizations and GROUPS
Since the 2002 elections when they
won 1.44 percent (76,000 votes) of the vote, the Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden
Democrats – SD) have remained the undisputed nationalist alternative in Sweden and the single largest party outside parliament. More than half of the 50 seats they
hold in local councils are located in the southern region of Scania.
SD propaganda focuses on three
populist themes: anti-immigrant rhetoric claiming that immigrants are behind
most violent crime and that Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to Swedish
culture and the Swedish judicial system; conspiracy theories alleging that
mainstream democratic organizations, the media and politicians are ‘betraying’
or ‘selling out’ the nation to a foreign ‘army of occupation’ – the immigrants;
and anti-European Union campaigning in which the EU is perceived as a threat to
democracy in Europe.
Mikael Jansson, the party
chairman from 1995 till 2005, invested considerable effort into changing the
fascist image of the party in order to make it more attractive to populist
voters dissatisfied with the mainstream parties (see ASW 1998/9).
However, the party has been plagued by power struggles in recent years.
(National Democrats – ND), have four seats in local councils in the greater
Stockholm area, are a breakaway group formed in 2001 by hardcore SD activists
who were expelled after clashing with Jansson’s faction over ‘liberalization’
of the party. The ND split in late summer 2004 following an internal power
struggle and half the executive left, taking three of the local Stockholm area seats with them. Part of the conflict centered on handling of the ‘Jewish
question’, with the antisemitic line prevailing. The new leader, Thomas
Johansson, is trying to rebuild the party. Those who left returned to SD or moved
to more hard-core neo-Nazi organizations. The ND view the SD as their main
enemy and are extremely contemptuous of former comrades and party leaders.
Although Sweden remains a major producer of
white power music, a growing portion of records, videos and other
merchandise is sent to overseas markets. The Nordic Publishing House was
the main white power propaganda disseminator in 2004, replacing Nordland,
owned by the late US white supremacist William Pierce, and Ragnarock Records,
run by Erik Blücher and Blood & Honour/Scandanavia, which dominated in
For many years the fastest
growing national socialist organization in Sweden, Nationalsocialistisk
Front (National Socialist Front – NSF) suffered a serious setback in 2000 when
its founder and charismatic party leader Anders Högström left the
Nazi movement (see ASW 2001/2).
The organization is now led by Anders Ärleskog and Daniel Höglund. In
2003 propaganda chief Björn Björkqvist also defected but in 2004 he returned
to the party and remains influential.
The vehemently anti-Jewish NSF
calls for a return to a more traditional National Socialism, and has adopted
much of the style of the original brown shirt ideology of the 1930s. The NSF
base has been moved from southern to mid-west Sweden, near the town of Vara. During 2004 the Front arranged several white power music nights with hundreds of
Motståndsrörelsen/Nationell Ungdom (Swedish Resistance/National
Youth – SMR/NU) are one of the most professionally organized and impenetrable
groups on the extreme right. Svenska Motstandsrörelsen (SMR) was
formed in 1997 as an umbrella organization for pro-terrorism hardliners of the
splintered Stockholm neo-Nazi milieu. Among its founders was the convicted
criminal, former White Aryan Resistance (VAM) activist Klas Lund. After
its merger with Nordland Records, SMR expanded rapidly, until the death of
Nordland owner William Pierce in 2002. In 2004 Klas Lund was convicted of possession of an illegal firearm. Shortly after beginning his jail sentence he
escaped and hid for more than six months until the police found him in Norway with the Norwegian Resistance Movement.
National Youth (NU) was originally
launched to pose as a ‘patriotic’ and ‘nationalistic’ youth club. Its cover was
almost immediately blown and NU has become the leading neo-Nazi organization in
the greater Stockholm area. Several members of SMR/NU were convicted of
involvement in various violent crimes and terrorist offenses in 1999, among
them the assassination of an anti-Nazi trade unionist. NU activities, mainly in
the larger cities of Stockholm and Göteborg, increased in 2004 after two
years of a negative spiral.
SMR/NU was once closely aligned
with the so-called secretive Anti-AFA (Anti-fascist) organization, which claims
to be the ‘intelligence apparatus’ of the neo-Nazi world. Anti-AFA compiles
lists of ‘anti-nationalist enemies’, including journalists, police officers,
politicians and anti-racist activists. Police raids have secured several
files from the computers of neo-Nazis, containing hundreds of these names. A
key individual in the Anti-AFA network is believed to be Robert Vesterlund, a
former skinhead and SD youth leader, and publisher of the magazine Info-14
2001/2). Following conviction of the compiler of the enemy list in 2003,
280 out of the thousand persons on it sued him for at least 10,000 SEK each.
Since the murder of 17-year-old
skinhead Daniel Wretström by a youth gang of mixed Swedish and immigrant
background in the town of Salem, south of Stockholm, in December 2000, the town
has become a rallying point for neo-Nazis and extreme rightists in Sweden on the anniversary of his death. The Salem Fund, set up by the Nazi prison
organization Yellow Cross, together with the pro-terrorist Info-14 and
Blood & Honour for organizing the annual commemoration, is supported
by the entire nationalist spectrum, except the Sweden Democrats.
There was a decline in the number of participants, from 2000 in 2003 to 1,400 in 2004.
Led by Curt Linusson, a former UN
peace-keeping officer in Bosnia, the Legion Wasa is a paramilitary unit
made up of a criminal neo-Nazi hardcore, many of whom are associated with the
NSF. Linusson says his force is preparing for a “forthcoming racial conflict”
against the Jews. The Legion, which holds maneuvers in forests in central Sweden, has organized several rallies against the construction of a mosque in the town of Skövde. In early 2003 Linusson held abortive negotiations with the Iraqi embassy in
order to send an armed volunteer squad to assist Saddam Husayn in his conflict
with the US. In 2004 a former activist of the Legion was prosecuted for creating
a terrorist cell in Sweden aimed at launching a holy racial war.
Begun as a publishing house in
2002, Nordiska Förbundet (Nordic Association) became an
organization in 2004. It is influenced by the US National Alliance and
especially by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who has interviewed
leading activists from the association on his radio show. The publishing house distributes
antisemitic books such as Duke’s Jewish Supremacy and Lars Adelskogh´s
Holocaust denying work An Empty Sack. The organization, in cooperation
with the publishing house, circulates the magazines Nordic Freedom and Peoples'
Annual statistics compiled by the
Office for Defense of the Constitution of the National Police Board (NPB) were not
published for the year 2004 due to a change in monitoring methods. The year 2003
witnessed a rise of 5 percent in hate crimes, from 3,736 in 2002 to 3,914. Of the total, 1,539 crimes were linked to the far right wing, compared to
1,374 the previous year.
Many in the Jewish community feel it
wise to hide their identity, although they believe only a small percentage of
the 400,000 Muslim immigrants to be a threat, according to an assessment of antisemitism in Sweden published
in Israel's leading newspaper Ha’aretz. Lena Posner-Koeroesi, president of the Stockholm Jewish community, claimed that whenever officials want to take action on
antisemitism, they group it together with Islamophobia and homophobia.
Researcher Mikael Tossavainen drafted a report issued by the Council Against
Anti-Semitism that surveyed antisemitism among Muslim immigrants. The report
aroused controversy due to Tossavainen's interviewing of school teachers, who noted
Muslim pupils’ objection to studying the Holocaust. He also stated that Swedes
were unaware of what was going on in the large Muslim communities in the
suburbs. Swedish Islamic studies scholar Jan Samuelsson claimed in the mainstream Dagens
Nyheter (20 Oct. 2004) that Arabs would hate the Jews as long as Israel occupied Arab lands, an idea that met with understanding among Swedes. Prof. Henrik
Bachner of Lund University, said events in the Middle East might sharpen
antisemitism but were not the origin of it. Bachner stressed that analogies between
Israel and the Nazis and the use of terminology drawn from the Christian
tradition, such as “the crucifixion of Arafat” in Aftonbladet before
Easter 2003, reflected tolerance of antisemitism (Amiram Barkat, “Jews in
Sweden Are Afraid to Be Known as Jews,” Ha’aretz, 10 Feb.
There were 65 unofficial reports of antisemitic incidents in 2004, mostly cases of
harassment (threats and verbal abuse), and 4 of physical assault. This
compares with police reports for 2003 of 3 cases of minor assault, 35 cases of
harassment and 9 cases of vandalism of Jewish sites. Most offenses were
committed in the metropolitan areas of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö
where the majority of Jews reside.
Violence, Vandalism and Harassment
Much antisemitic crime in 2004,
particularly violence and vandalism, appeared to be triggered by the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. On 30 March, for example, four youths of Middle East origin entered a
Jewish-owned shop in Mälmo and assaulted the shopkeeper and a Jewish
customer. The shopkeeper was hospitalized. A Jewish boy was also attacked by
youth of Middle East extraction in Göteborg, in February.
At a soccer match held on 13 June
between a local Maccabi team and a team of immigrant players, spectators shouted
“Death to the Jews” and “Crush Zionism.” After the game the coach of the
opposing team approached one of the Jewish players and hit him in the face,
starting a brawl that ended with the hospitalization of one of the Jewish
A group of youths shouted “We’ll
kill you” at a Jew standing near a synagogue in Malmö. The police arrested
one of them.
The Jewish cemetery in Stockholm was desecrated twice; 17 gravestones were broken in April and 4 in September.
Since the September 11 attacks antisemitism
has remained a cornerstone of neo-Nazi ideology while Islamphobia is primarily
the province of the more ‘respectable’ Sweden Democrats. The National Democrats
propagate both, although when discussing conspiracy theories, Jews are usually
referred to indirectly as ‘Illuminati’, ‘Free Masonry’ and ‘international
capitalism’. Jews are seen as ‘the threat from above’, controlling the
political establishment, the media and the police, while Muslims are viewed as ‘the
threat from below’, seeking an immigrant takeover. The white population is
therefore perceived as being squeezed in a grip between the two.
The Nordic Association was the
most dominant among ultra-conservative and xenophobic organizations in
disseminating anti-Jewish propaganda in 2004. As noted, it is greatly influenced
by US extreme rightists, such as David Duke.
Holocaust denier Ahmed Rami, the
operator of Radio Islam, remains the chief disseminator of propaganda denying
the Holocaust, although most of his activities in recent years have been
limited to the Internet. In spite of his Moroccan background, Rami has gained
the approval of several white power groups, including the NSF. In 2004 Rami was
invited to speak at the Nordic Association where he accused Judaism of “everything
that is evil.”
The Malmö city library hosted
an exhibition in April 2004, which presented Israel as a state built on “expulsion
and terror” and which justified suicide bombing. At its inauguration, the
display was supported, inter alia, by a Malmö politician from the Conservative
Party, who said killing Jewish children was justified, and a Social Democrat,
who said bombing Jewish civilians was self-defense, Jewish terrorists had
created the State of Israel and the task of his party was to represent Muslims,
not Jews, in Malmö’s high-immigrant density suburb of Rosengärd.
In 2004 the Living History Forum published
a major survey on intolerance which was distributed among 10,000 students in Sweden aged 14−18. Over 75 percent of the students actually completed the survey,
which covered antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia and xenophobia.
Eighty-three percent of
respondents agreed with the statement that most Jews were good people and 72
percent said they would not mind living next to a Jew. Twenty-two percent,
however, opposed Jews having the right to build religious buildings,
while 23 percent opposed Muslims having the right to
build mosques. Twelve percent agreed with the statement that there were too
many Jews in Sweden. Ninety percent did not support the statement that Jews were
In order to measure the level of antisemitism, the compilers
of the survey inserted a number of prejudices, such as “A Jew is a stingy
person.” Ten similar statements formed a battery of measurable parameters. Five
percent agreed with certainty or with some certainty that the scurrilous portrait was
correct. The general index of intolerance
against Jews was 1.04 (1.00 marking absolute tolerance). Thus, the majority of the
students felt positively toward Jews in Sweden; just under 6 percent, however,
had an index higher than 2.5, indicating high intolerance. The findings indicate that the rate
of antisemitism among Muslim immigrants was no higher than among other sectors
of society that identified themselves as non-religious.
RESPONSES TO EXTREMISM AND
In May 2004 the Jewish Central
Council in Sweden wrote to Archbishop K.G. Hammar, breaking off contacts
with the Swedish (Lutheran) Church. Hammar had initiated the decision of
the Swedish Church to boycott products originating in the territories occupied
by Israel. His campaign had the backing of 12 organizations that want the EU to
break its trade agreements with Israel. The Council letter protested a lack of
sympathy with the Jews of Sweden and pointed out that singling out Israel for boycott, when many other states could be accused of the same infractions, was an
expression of antisemitism.
Seminars and other events were
held during 2004 under the auspices of Sweden’s Living History Project,
initiated by Prime Minister Göran Persson following the January 2000
Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust. The project has become a model
for Holocaust education in Europe. Sweden initiated and remains an active member of the International
Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. Paideia, the
European Institute of Jewish Studies is based in Sweden.
The Swedish Committee against
Antisemitism (SCAA) continued to arrange lectures and courses on antisemitism,
Holocaust denial, neo-Nazism and white power music throughout the country,
mostly for teachers and school personnel.
Educational seminars on
antisemitism and Islamophobia were an important part of the anti-fascist Expo
Foundation’s activities in 2004.
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"Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution to a problem. The method was first popularized in the late 1930s by Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive and one of the founders of BBDO, in a book called Applied Imagination. Osborn proposed that groups could double their creative output by using the method of brainstorming." -Wikipedia Article on Brainstorming
Pages in category "Brainstorming"
This category contains only the following page.
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ObjectivesCommunication | Collaboration | Team Strategy
- 1’ x 1’ squares of cardboard or foam or rubber baseball bases work well also(half to two-thirds as many squares as people in the group)
- You can also substitute 8.5" x 11" pieces of paper
- 2 pieces of rope (or masking tape or 4 cones)
- Several Blindfolds (optional)
Create a river by marking two river banks with the rope. Make the river wide enough to be a challenge for the group to get from one side to the other (look at about 15 – 25 ft.). Distribute the cardboard squares – 1 piece for every 2 people.
The object of the activity is to get all members of the group safely across the river. They must go as one big group, not multiple smaller ones. Also stress that everyone must be on the river before anyone can get off the river, forcing the entire group to be engaged at once. Participants cannot touch the water (floor/grass) and therefore must use rafts (cardboard squares) to cross. The water is filled with piranhas. Therefore if someone loses their balance and touches a hand in the water it gets eaten(put behind the back). Same goes for a foot. If a person completely comes off the raft they are gone and since this is a team exercise everyone must start over. I recommend using this motto with the group, "start as a team end as a team." You can also be creative and add challenges in as the group crosses. For instance you can say a fish jumped up and tail slapped someone in the eyes so now they cannot see(blindfolded). Tell them the river is acidic and when two people share a raft it tipped and now their legs are fused together(tie ankles together). Use these tools to help take away the natural leaders or more outspoken participants and it forces the others to step up and take on more substantial roles. No scooting or sliding on the squares. This can be a safety issue and it emphasizes individual work versus teamwork. Rafts must be in contact with a human at all times or they will be swept away with the current. Once the group has started the process, your role is to take cardboard squares that are “swept away by the current” and to watch for safety issues. Use this to your advantage as well. The participants will invariably slip up and leave some rafts here or there with no one contacting them, those you should steal. When the first group members get to the other side immediately start to encourage them to hurry and get off the river. Nearly every time the first few people will rush off the rafts leaving them unattended for you to steal and stranding some of their team-mates. Work this into your debrief, when working with a team you can't forget about your mates. just because you have made it to the finish line someone else may not have.
- Participants must stay in constant contact
- Each raft represents a symbol named by participants
- River Sections
- The tiles can only go forward. They cannot move backwards
- No one can finish until everyone has left the “bank” of the river
- Choose to add challenges like muting individuals, using only 1 arm, eyes closed/blindfolded, no one can talk, others can be "gators" in the river and try to impede those crossing the river, stand in front of the group with arms outstretched to simulate tree they must go around.
- Give group an object that they need to carry with them to safety and discuss what that might represent
- Create situations for them to draw from that are connected directly to their group
- What happened during the process? What worked? What didn’t or what hindered the process?
- What leadership was demonstrated during the process? How so? What did you observe?
- What were the individual roles people played? Were members comfortable with their roles?
- Who knew what the process for crossing was? Who didn’t? How did you communicate the plans to group members?
- What might the different aspects of the exercise represent in your group: the squares, the river, the loss of squares, the facilitator, etc?
- When the first people rushed off the river and stranded some of you how did that feel?
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At the peak of the technology bubble in March of 2000, spending on Internet infrastructure had exploded, Cisco Systems had a market cap of $578 billion, and venture capitalists were pumping millions into anything that ended in “.com.” Over the next three years, 655 telecom companies would go bankrupt, and $5 trillion in market cap would vanish from stock exchanges.
A disaster, right? It felt like one at the time. Raising money for an Internet startup became nearly impossible on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road. Yet all that investment in the infrastructure of the Internet—the switches, the routers, and the fiber optic cable—drastically reduced the costs of bandwidth and made possible the applications layer, the things we love about the Internet—Twitter, streaming movies, cloud computing. Today we use information technology to do things we didn’t imagine circa 2000, like buying shoes without trying them on first. All this was accomplished with software and clever ideas for better using the available infrastructure.
We see in this story important analogies with clean energy. Advanced biofuels, electric cars, and solar power are living through their own boom and bust times. The cost of solar panels has fallen from over $4.00 per watt to less than $1.00 in just four years. That’s bad for solar investors, and panel makers are struggling to survive. Some have gone out of business. But at the same time, infrastructure is being built. Spending on solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy has exploded, reaching $250 billion per year.
Raising venture capital for capital-intensive clean tech, especially for early-stage companies involved in new types of energy production, has become increasingly difficult. That has investors like us thinking about new ways to apply our dollars to the energy problem. We believe the next opportunity is what we call the “cleanweb”—a form of clean tech that takes advantage of the Internet, social media, and mobile communications to alter how we consume resources, relate to the world, interact with each other, and pursue economic growth.
We think that IT and fast-growing Web business models can expand the use of renewable energy. These days the challenges that industries like solar, wind, and biofuels face are often not about fundamental science. Many of the big breakthroughs have already taken place, and in some circumstances, electricity from wind and solar is already cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels. What hampers these industries now is poor sales channels, complex financing and incentives, and a failure to communicate with consumers.
That makes them ripe for disruption by the application of information technologies, which will drive the next phase of cost reduction and implementation, especially for solar. The price of a rooftop solar installation has dropped by half in the last few years, but the reductions in panel prices can’t continue. Now more than half the price of a home solar array is made up of soft costs like site evaluation, customer acquisition, and financing. On average, solar companies spend $2,500 to acquire each new customer. Imagine the frustration when after sending a truck out to a home, an installer discovers that a tree shading the roof makes the project uneconomical or that the customer doesn’t qualify for financing. That’s a significant waste of time and money.
Better information can reduce these inefficiencies. OneRoof Energy, for example, a solar company we’ve invested in, uses satellite imagery to remotely work up a customer’s project, determining its cost and viability long before a truck ever rolls out to the house. Another company we’re backing, Solar Mosaic, is raising money for solar installations via online crowdsourced loans. We estimate that IT-driven solutions alone can reduce solar costs by another 75 percent; if so, solar could become decisively cheaper than electricity from coal. Eventually it could account for 15 to 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs.
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Use the scientific method to improve democracy.
When the USA was invented, it was a great experiment in democracy. Democracy is considered the best form of government.on Earth. I think we can do better, much better. The wisest aspect of the USA Constitution is the ability to amend it. Let us amend it to continue the experiment.
I would like some suggestions for a method, a process, for improving democracy. I am not so much interested in discussing specific improvements, but a PROCESS whereby improvements could be proposed, tried and evaluated. This process might take years or centuries.
I think one simple method would be a constitutional amendment that would allow localities to try different forms of government. Then people could choose by moving to the jurisdiction of their choice, or moving away. This might cause serious problems, with the the rich moving together and other areas left with no tax base. To some extent, this is already happening anyway.
What are your ideas?
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A dramatic drop in the population of puffins at their main North Sea breeding site has alarmed scientists.
- Global warming blamed for decline of puffins
- Britain's oldest puffin resurfaces
- British birds face potential eco-disaster
After almost 40 years of breeding success puffin numbers on the Isle of May have plummeted by 30 per cent.
It is not known whether the sudden decline is merely a blip or whether the tiny iconic bird has joined the list of sea birds in long term decline in the North Sea.
The sudden drop in numbers was revealed in a survey carried out every five years on the island off Scotland's east coast by scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
The Isle of May is home to the largest colony of puffins in the North Sea and has been the centre of the UK science community's research into the bird for over three decades.
Numbers have increased dramatically from a handful of pairs 50 years ago to more than 69,000 pairs at the time of the last count in 2003.
Scientists had expected numbers to soar to more than 100,000 pairs this year and are baffled by the loss of almost one in three birds.
Professor Mike Harris, Emeritus Research Fellow at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who has studied puffins for 36 year, said: "Something worrying appears to have happened over last winter and probably the one before.
"Puffins appear to be joining the ranks of other seabirds in the North Sea that are suffering reduced breeding success and decline in numbers."
The puffin (Fratercula arctica) is instantly recognisable by its bright red and black eye markings and vivid orange legs and is known as the clown of seabirds. But its comical looks and endearing traits has made it one of the world's favourite birds.
Adults arrive back at their breeding colonies in the Shetland and Orkney Islands, Northumberland, Anglesey and the Isle of May in March and April and they leave again in mid-August. They nest in burrows on the cliff tops and rely mainly on sand eels to feed their young.
The disappearance of the sand eel due mainly to industrial fishing by factory ships in the North Sea is believed to be one of the main factors in the puffin's decline on May.
Bird numbers are assessed by carefully examining burrows for signs of occupation in late April after the birds have cleaned them out ready for breeding. In past surveys the occupancy rate was nearly 100 per cent, but this year it was down to only 70 per cent.
Scientists also noticed fewer birds than usual had returned to the island and those that did were underweight compared to previous years suggesting they may have had a difficult winter.
Unusually high numbers of puffins, including some ringed on the island in previous years, were washed ashore dead during the last two winters.
Professor Harris said: "We need to repeat the survey next year to check the unlikely possibility that a large numbers of puffins took a summer off from visiting the Island. We also need to widen the survey to include other colonies in the North Sea to measure to what extent the puffin population is declining in the area."
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Patient Education: Symptoms of Back and Neck Pain
Description of the Symptoms of Back and Neck Pain
The word doctor comes from the Latin root "doctos" – meaning to teach, and this is an important part of what any doctor should do. Unfortunately, many of us only really begin to learn about our body once something has gone wrong with it. Patient education on the symptoms of back and neck pain is an ongoing process that takes on many forms.
Back and Neck Pain Conditions Treated
Patient education applies to all spinal problems concerning the symptoms of back and neck pain.
What Does Patient Education Involve?
- The basics of patient education involve providing patients with information about their condition, diagnostic tests that may be performed, and possible treatment options.
There are many forums for patient education, which include discussions with care providers, reading brochures and other printed materials, viewing videos and visiting websites. For patients experiencing symptoms of back and neck pain, an educational program called "back school" may be used. This is a comprehensive, organized session in which information is provided about anatomy, body mechanics, diagnostic tests, treatments and many other spine-related topics.
- One note of caution: The quality and accuracy of information on websites varies greatly. If you read something that gives you concern, discuss it with your care provider.
One of the key components of effective patient education is for the patient to take an active role in the educational process:
- This involves applying the materials learned by making lifestyle changes.
- Perhaps one of the most important aspects is for patients to ask questions until they feel confident they understand the information provided answers their questions about the symptoms of back and neck pain.
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Adding Color to the Freshwater Aquarium: Going for Gold (Full Article)Author: Philip Purser
The glowing, sun-like radiance of gold and yellow fish is sure to pop in the freshwater aquarium. Yellow is a common color in some aquariums (perhaps too common in the African cichlid tank), yet getting just the right species of fish to shine its radiant splendor in your aquarium is, perhaps, even more touch-and-go than it is with some other color choices. Yellow species come in the form of peaceful schoolers, as well as sensitive, scaleless loners that require a mature tank and very specific water chemistry parameters. A splash of golden sunshine in an otherwise green or earth-toned aquarium environment can truly be a sight for sore eyes, however.
Few things are as dramatic as the gilt-finned flash of a gold-nugget pleco swimming past the front of your tank or as eye-catching as a school of lemon tetras, with their canary-yellow finnage shining in golden relief against an earthen background. So, let’s go for gold and discover what species of yellow fish are available for the freshwater community aquarium.
The first species up for consideration is the gold barb (Puntius semifasciolatus). Native to the Red River in China, the gold barb is, in its naturally occurring coloration, greenish olive and very rarely appears in aquaria. The cultivated form, made popular in the late 1960s, wears a golden color on the body, often with a broken line of high-contrast black speckles running the length of the flanks, and bears yellow or orange finnage.
When healthy and kept under superior water chemistry, the gold barb is a relatively long-lived species. Its lifespan may exceed six years. As a barb (a member of the family Cyprinidae), P. semifasciolatus thrives best when kept in schools. I recommend no fewer than five in a school, though six or more is certainly advantageous to the stress levels and happiness of the fish themselves.
Growing to a maximum length of roughly 3 inches, the gold barb is a peaceful grazer that does well in tanks planted with live vegetation—this species especially likes to graze on algal accumulations in the tank. A mid-level swimmer that seldom sits still, the gold barb is a high-visibility species that, when kept in a school, will definitely add the splash of sunshine to your tank you may be looking for. These very active fish can, indeed, become the dominant species in view at any given time.
Most species of barbs are notoriously tough fish that tend to be tolerant of a very wide range of water chemistries. Maintain the pH from 6.0 to 7.8 and KH at 6.0 to 20.0. Because they can tolerate a wide range of temperatures, these barbs may be kept in either heated or unheated aquaria. Maintain temperatures of 65° to 77°F.
When selecting gold barbs for purchase in pet shops, remember that males (and this is true for most fish species) are considerably smaller and more colorful than females. Bigger specimens are likely to be less attractive in the long run than their smaller counterparts. A school consisting of both sexes is an active, viable, and striking addition to the home aquarium. While they might get a little nippy with elaborately finned species, such as fancy guppies or bettas, these barbs are highly disease resistant and very hardy. As a general rule, you simply can’t go wrong with gold barbs.
Gold Nugget Pleco
If aquarium oddities are your thing and you prefer loner species or non-schooling varieties, look no further than the gold nugget pleco. Gold nugget plecos (Baryancistrus spp.) may actually be one of several closely related fishes. So similar in form, coloration, and life habits are these species that many importers and wholesalers are either unable or unwilling to differentiate. Thus, many hobbyists simply order or describe the gold nugget by the L number they have been assigned, L18 (sometimes L018), as this is how it is imported from South America. Two other forms, L177 and L81 (or L85), are supposed by many to be the same species (or adult or juvenile forms of L18), but, owing to larger or smaller spots on the body and geographically different collection sites, these fish may be considered subspecies or different species altogether. As the plecos are still coming into their own within the worldwide aquarium hobby, more differentiation and classification should accompany these wonderful fish.
As a member of the community tank, the gold nugget pleco is one of the most stunningly gorgeous plecos available. Wearing a base coat of chocolate brown to near black with almost perfectly round yellow to golden spots freckling the entire dorsum and much of the fins, this fish is also adorned with a wide, golden band trimming both the dorsal and caudal fins. Such a bold, striking contrast of coloration makes this peaceful bottom feeder a particularly handsome addition to the home aquarium.
Growing to an adult length of approximately 8 inches, the gold nugget pleco appears in pet shops typically between 2 and 3 inches in size. Know that the 3-inch specimen you purchase today could more than double in size. Also know that this species is an extremely long-lived aquarium fish. Specimens living in excess of 25 years are not unheard of. Unlike many species of plecostomus, which may grow to over two feet in length, this jewel stays small throughout its lifespan. A 30-gallon or larger tank should be enough room for one for its entire life.
Like most plecos, the gold nugget is not a picky eater—both vegetable and meaty fare are taken with relish. Vegetable-based flakes or pleco-specific pellets/flakes work well, as do cubes of freeze-dried brine shrimp or bloodworms. Diet may be supplemented with wheels or wedges of zucchini squash dropped (weighted down, as they tend to float) directly into the tank. Another benefit to adding this brilliantly colored species to your tank is that it is extremely peaceful and will coexist well with virtually any other species that can tolerate the pleco’s water chemistry requirements.
Speaking of water chemistry requirements, this is one of the few drawbacks to keeping this species. It requires warmer water temperatures and softer water than most community tropicals. The gold nugget pleco should be housed under the following conditions: pH 6.7 to 7.5, KH 1.0 to 10.0, and temperatures of 78° to 87°. See what I mean? While many species can mix with the pH requirements of the gold nugget pleco, the low water hardness and very high temperature requirements make for a narrow pool of potential tankmates. South American cichlids and tropicals hailing from the Amazon Basin are great community choices for mixing with the gold nugget pleco.
Of course, not all the golden and yellow fish on the market are so difficult to acquire. There are plenty of low-priced pet shop staples that can give you the nuclear color blast you’re looking for. The family Poeciliidae has two such species: the swordtails and the fancy guppies. These long-time favorites of both young and old hobbyists alike come in all manner of golds and yellows, and they can easily, and inexpensively, add a solar flare of beauty to your aquarium. Since I’ve already covered fancy guppies in a previous article, I will discuss only the swordtails here, but do note that if your aquarium community is peaceful enough to support them, the fancy guppies are a wonderful choice.
Cousin to the guppies is the swordtail. Hailing from Central America, the swordtail is a wonderful little species that tends to blend very well in the tropical community tank. Drawing its common name from the long, sword-like projection of rays growing on the lower edge of the caudal fin, this species is peaceful and seldom exceeds 5 inches in length. As is typical of community tropicals, the males are the smaller and much more elaborately colored of the two sexes. Sexual dimorphism exists in that the males alone have swords on their tails.
These fish come in both designer and natural colors. Most natural specimens are olive in coloration, while many pet shop varieties have been bred for their golds, yellows, and oranges. Particularly handsome specimens may be a creamy, lemon meringue color with a black-edged sword of the same color. Conversely, I have seen many specimens wearing radiant coats of golden hues highlighted in softer yellows and even silvers. The swordtail is truly an often-unsung beauty in the freshwater world.
Maintain swordtails under water conditions similar to those preferred by guppies. Keep the pH around or just above neutral and the water hardness moderate, with the temperature in the middle to upper 70s.
As is true of the guppies, the swordtails have some special considerations. Tail nippers, such as fish in the family Cyprinidae, can be dangerous tankmates for the swordtails, as these animals may find the flashy yellow swords of your new fish too tempting to pass up. Likewise, the swordtails are prone to ailment. Bacterial infections caused by stress and poor water conditions are common in this species. Such stress may be greatly reduced by providing your fish with aquarium salt. Indeed, all members of the Poeciliidae family fare better in aquariums with some salt in the water. These fish are also sensitive to ammonia spikes and, when stressed, are prone to both bacterial and fungal infection. Swords can be wonderful gold and yellow additions to tanks that are chemically right for their long-term husbandry and care, though they are not as hardy of constitution as barbs or tetras.
Speaking of tetras, what community tank would be complete without some tetras thrown in? If you’re as much of a tetra lover as I am, there is good news, as this family of fishes definitely has some golden/yellow representatives. Both the lemon tetra and the pristella tetra are yellow species that can add some sunshine to your tank.
By far the more yellow of the two, the lemon tetra (Hyphessobrycon pulchripinnis) is a gorgeous little tetra with a zesty, lemony basal coloration, accented with dorsal and anal fins that are bright yellow and rimmed in black. To make this tetra even more attractive, it comes with bright crimson eyes.
Naturally peaceful and gregarious, the lemon tetra thrives in schools of a half dozen or more. Like most tetras, these fish really show a visible difference in coloration when fed high-protein, color-enhancing flakes. Freeze-dried bloodworms and brine shrimp are also eagerly taken.
One of the only drawbacks to the lemon tetra (tetras, in my opinion, are the perfect tropical community fishes because they have very few drawbacks) is that, when housed singularly or in inadequately small schools, these fish seem to languish away. Their movements will slow, their colors will fade, and their overall vitality will lessen when deprived of schooling tankmates.
Lemon tetras are mid-level swimmers that do best in a planted aquarium with a pH of 6.2 to 7.5, a KH of 5.0 to 24.0, and temperatures of 68° to 78°. Specimens kept under less-than-ideal conditions may appear faded or washed out in color. When housed properly, however, the full splendor of a school of lemon tetras is like the rising sun. Virtually all other non-aggressive, non-predatory species make fine tankmates with the lemon tetra.
Golden Pristella Tetras
A close cousin to the lemon tetra is the golden pristella tetra (Pristella maxillaris). While its bodily coloration is much more subdued than the lemon tetra, the dorsal and anal fins of the golden pristella are, as the name implies, golden flags edged in black and tipped in white. These features make this fish a less gaudy, more subdued flash of radiance within your aquarium.
Growing to a demure maximum length of typically less than 2 inches, this minuscule tetra is, like the lemon tetra, a shoaling species. It is best kept in schools of six or more members. Wild diets include all fry and invertebrates, while a captive diet heavy in bloodworms, brine shrimp, and other such meaty foods is preferred.
Unlike many species of tetra, however, the golden pristella can thrive in a very wide range of pH and water hardness values. Found in both acidic, inland rivers as well as in coastal, semi-brackish estuaries, the golden pristella tetra is one of the most widely adaptable species of community tropical available. This attribute makes this species at home in virtually any community tropical tank. So long as predatory fish cannot eat it, and so long as it is kept in schools of its kindred, the golden pristella tetra can mix well with a very wide range of tankmates.
Other Yellow Options
While there are other species of yellow or golden fish available (some of the gouramis, for example, or the yellow sailfin molly, or the rare and highly sought-after yellow betta), there simply is not enough room to cover them all here. Suffice it to say, golds and yellows can brighten a dark tank, enliven a lackluster tank, and breathe their vibrant, celestial fire into virtually any home aquarium. As I mentioned earlier, if you are a keeper of African cichlids, you may have a hard time getting away from yellows in your tank. Likewise, marine tanks frequently boast of the rich, lemon hues of the tangs. With a little research and effort, the freshwater community tank, too, may come alive with golden hues and yellow flashes.
See the full article on TFH Digital http://www.tfhdigital.com/tfh/201301#pg71
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Stem cells could deliver tumor-busting drugs, repair damaged brains, and even mend a (literally) broken heart. But first, scientists must figure out how to get these jacks-of-all-trades where they’re needed and ensure that they survive long enough to do their work.
Achieving this objective requires being able to observe the cells after they’re set loose inside a living, breathing animal. Of course, scientists can make tissue slices and use histology to look for the cells, but that offers only a snapshot of one final time point.
“If you want to understand what happens to these stem cells, it’s important to track the fate of these cells without having to kill the animal,” says Joseph Wu, a cardiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. Stem cell transplants may settle down, proliferate, and differentiate as desired; they may form dangerous tumors; or they may simply falter and die.
Researchers are harnessing advanced imaging to look inside their animals, or even inside patients, and track stem cells as they travel through tissues. Some techniques rely on inert tags the stem cells carry with them, and others use genetic markers that prove a cell is actually alive and making protein.
Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. “Depending on the research question, you may even want to combine different approaches,” says Frank Bengel, a nuclear medicine physician at Hannover Medical School in Germany.
Here, The Scientist profiles four methods used to track stem cells once they’re on their own inside a new body.
Optical Imaging: Bioluminescence
Xiaoyuan (Shawn) Chen, chief and senior investigator, Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, Bethesda, Maryland.
Ultimately, Chen hopes to develop personalized medical therapies, including those relying on stem cells. For now, he’s simply trying to understand the fate of transplanted stem cells, and how they home in on tumors—targets to which they might someday custom-deliver chemotherapy (Stem Cells, 27:1548-58, 2009).
Mesenchymal stem cells home in on tumors and divide there, promoting remodeling of the tissue—suggesting they might be good drug-delivery vehicles. Before transplanting mouse mesenchymal stem cells into breast tumor-bearing mice with lung metastases, the researchers engineered the cells to express luciferase. By injecting the mice with luciferin—the enzyme’s substrate—they caused the transplanted cells to light up. The researchers also included the gene for green fluorescent protein, so they could double-check their results by histology. Although most of the stem cells got stuck in the lung’s capillaries, a few not only survived, but also proliferated and differentiated near the tumor sites.
- “Bioluminescence imaging is the workhorse for small-animal imaging: it’s cheap, it’s easy to do, it’s high-throughput,” Wu says.
- Only living cells light up.
- The method is highly sensitive, detecting 1,000 or fewer cells. “The background is very low,” Chen adds.
- Bioluminescence can only penetrate through a few millimeters of tissue; it won’t work for large animals or people.
- The resulting image is flat, not 3-D.
- Some cells may turn off the transgene, producing false negatives.
Bioluminescence imaging requires a light-tight box with fluorescence filters and camera. Caliper Life Sciences’ version costs $100,000–$400,000, depending on the features chosen.
- Fluorescent proteins
- Quantum dots
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Marcel Daadi, neuroscientist and instructor in the neurosurgery department, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California.
Daadi hopes to use stem cells to repair the neural networks of people who’ve suffered strokes or have Parkinson’s disease, thus improving their ability to move normally. An early step is to examine what happens to neural stem cells once grafted into the brains of rats that had had induced strokes (Mol Ther, 17:1282-91, 2009.)
Daadi’s team used both bioluminescence and MRI to follow the fate of human neural stem cells transplanted into the rats’ brains. To make the cells visible in an MRI, the researchers first filled them up with tiny magnetic beads. Many cell types readily take up these superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) particles. Such grafts show up in the image as low-intensity areas. The researchers used bioluminescence imaging to confirm that the stem cells did indeed survive, and settled near the site of the stroke for as long as three months. The MRI results indicated that the more cells transplanted, the larger the graft that was formed.
- Anatomical information is built in. “It gives you great resolution of the brain…we see where the stroke is, where cells are in relation to the stroke,” Daadi says.
- Some SPIO particles are already FDA-approved, so the technique could be used in humans.
- It’s possible to use MRI in the operating room, so surgeons could confirm exactly where they injected the SPIO-labeled cells.
- Low sensitivity: Wu often asks his MRI-expert colleagues to blindly detect injected SPIO versus background. “A lot of times, they can’t,” he says.
- MRI gives no indication of cell viability—dead cells can hang around for weeks. Or, macrophages clean up the area, ingesting the SPIO and producing a false signal. “You could see the ghosts of cells, but not living cells,” says Eduardo Marbán, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, California.
- As the cells proliferate, the iron particles get diluted.
For preclinical imaging, a 9.4 Tesla magnet is the “sweet spot,” says Rob Robinson, global business development manager for MRI at Agilent Technologies. Those machines, which range in price from $1.5 million to $3 million depending on size, are available at research institutions, hospitals, and at medical schools.
Clinical-grade magnetic nanoparticles are available from AMAG Pharmaceuticals, which markets Feraheme to treat anemia, and Miltenyi Biotec makes iron dextran beads for cell separation. BioPAL and Genovis provide experimental-grade SPIO for approximately $200–$500/2 mL, according to Joe Frank of the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
- Perfluorocarbon particles that show up when an MRI is tuned for fluorine
- MRI reporter genes that increase the iron content of cells (see below).
Radionucleotide Imaging: PositronEmission Tomography
Eduardo Marbán, director and Mark Siegel Family Foundation Chair, Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Los Angeles, California.
Marbán, a cardiologist, aims to use stem cells to repair the muscle damage resulting from a heart attack. He hopes stem cells will provide the necessary signals to make the heart convert scar tissue into healthy muscle. Unfortunately, the heart is a tricky target for stem cells—once injected, the heart pumps them right back out again. Within an hour, only 10% of the graft is left in the heart, and only 1% of cells remain after three weeks, he laments. “If we could boost those values, then we could get more bang for the buck with stem-cell therapy,” Marbán says. In a recent study, he and his colleagues managed to improve retention rates by slowing or stopping the heart or dabbing a bit of fibrin glue in the injection site. (J Am Coll Cardiol, 54:1619-26, 2009).
The scientists transplanted cardiac-derived stem cells from healthy rats into the hearts of those that had undergone surgically-orchestrated heart attacks. To label the transplanted stem cells, they first incubated them with the radioactive tracer 18FDG, a form of glucose toting a radioactive fluorine, that was internalized by the cells. Using a PET scanner, they were able to follow the cells and show that after an hour, 20–75% of the transplanted cells remained in the heart if its beat was slowed by drugs or if glue was dabbed into the injection site.
- “It’s the only reliable quantitative method, other than destructive methods,” Marbán says, because the half-life of the tracer is known.
- PET is already available in clinics.
- Minimal background signal.
- PET is limited by the half-life of the tracer; signals from 18-fluorine, for example, last for six to eight hours because the isotope’s half-life is 110 minutes.
- PET does not indicate cell viability—the tracer could leak out of the cell or show up in macrophages that devoured the original stem cells.
- This method requires the use of radioactive substances, with the associated risks to cells, animals, and personnel.
A PET scanner from Philips Healthcare runs between $1 million and $1.5 million, and the machines have become standard equipment in hospitals. Radioactive tracers are also required; a human-size dose of 18FDG costs $200-250 at Cedars-Sinai. To acquire the tracers, one needs to be within a few hours of a cyclotron that can generate the radioactive fluorine ion for coupling to the glucose; most major universities have one, Wu says.
- Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)
- Combining PET with computed tomography helps scientists localize the radioactive signal within the animal’s anatomy.
Genetic Reporters for PET
Frank Bengel, chairman of the department of nuclear medicine, Hannover Medical School, Germany
Both PET and MRI only reveal where the labels are. “The cell may die and you may still get the signal,” Bengel says. Plus, preloading the cells only works as long as the tracers last—hours or days for PET tracers. Bengel is developing reporter genes that allow living cells to produce their own PET signal at any time.
The technique relies on genes whose products force the cell to grab onto radioactive tracers. For example, the herpes simplex virus enzyme thymidine kinase (HSV-tk) phosphorylates a guanine homolog called FHBG. Unphosphorylated FHBG travels freely in and out of cells. But once phosphorylated—as only happens in cells having the HSV-tk gene—it’s negatively charged, and stuck on the inside. By engineering stem cells to express the transgene before transplantation, then treating the animal with radioactive FHBG, researchers can observe the transplants on a PET scan.
- Only live cells show up: “If you don’t see a signal, there are no cells,” Wu says.
- With promoters specific for different cell types, these reporters could also indicate whether the stem cells go on to differentiate.
- HSV-tk provides a built-in fail-safe: the viral kinase phosphorylates the antiviral drug ganciclovir, turning the drug cytotoxic. Should transplanted cells cause trouble—for example, start to form a tumor—doctors could treat the person with ganciclovir. Upon phosphorylation by HSV-tk, the drug would simply kill the genetically engineered cells.
- PET with reporters is not as sensitive as with directly radiolabeled cells; more cells are necessary to produce a detectable signal.
- The transgene might compromise the cell’s normal function, or the cell might silence the transgene.
- As a viral protein, HSV-tk may activate the host immune system.
One needs a PET scanner plus cloning technology.
- Researchers are also working with mitochondrial thymidine kinase, the human sodium-iodide symporter (NIS), and the mammalian dopamine type 2 receptor as potential PET reporters.
- MRI reporters are also an option: overexpression of ferritin or of the transferrin receptor, both of which regulate cellular iron levels, makes the iron-rich cells show up.
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In the midst of a general audience in the Vatican last October, Pope John Paul II said: "If a man gazes on his wife lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart." The statement caused an immediate sensation. Reconsidered, though, it may have been one of the Pope's more enlightened pronouncements on women and sex. John Paul had simply insisted that, in conjugal relations, a woman is the equal of a man—a subject, not an object, of sex. That is an attitude that has not flourished in the Church historically; nor does it today.
A misogynistic prejudice has pervaded the Church's moral thought down through the ages, based on the incident of Eve as the temptress in Genesis, and confirmed by the Stoic rhetoric in which the early Christian thinkers were trained. It reflected the Platonic conviction that man's proper activity was contemplation. Churchmen from Tertullian and Cyprian in the third century to Jerome and John Chrysostom in the fifth delighted in denigrating womanhood as the source of the human race's downfall.
While attributing mankind's woes to the lubricious enticements of woman, preachers with awe-inspiring inconsistency harped upon a wife's rendering the conjugal debt contracted in marriage by giving her husband the sole use of her body. That the contract worked both ways was also on the books, but little attention was paid to this consideration because it was taken for granted that the sex act had been created for the man's convenience. Most women in the Christian tradition were taught that there was something distasteful about sex. They had to submit to their husband's advances with some regularity to keep peace in the household and beget children. Few Christian wives, even the educated ones, had any idea that, biologically, the sex act was made for the woman. Fewer still seem to have achieved the earthy wisdom of the Wyf of Bathe, who said:
In wyfhode i wil use myn instrument
As frely as my maker hath me it sent,
If i be dangerous, God give me sowre
Myn housband shall have it at eve and at mowre
When that him lis com forth and pay his dette.
St. Paul's injunction "Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church" was interpreted in a mystical sense, divorced from any connection with conjugal affection and coital satisfaction. Despite the heavy use of sexual imagery throughout the Old Testament to describe the relations between Yahweh and his chosen people, Christian exegetes avoided the Canticle of Canticles as mysteriously salacious, or interpreted it in such a fashion that it reinforced a propensity for sexual asceticism in conjugal relations. This puritanical tendency infected Christian thinking from the late second century until shortly before Vatican Council II (1962-1965). Traditional teaching on sexuality had been reduced in most preconciliar moral textbooks to the inhuman prescription: "It is grievously sinful in the unmarried deliberately to procure or to accept even the mildest degree of true venereal pleasure; secondly, it is equally sinful to think, say or do anything with the intention of arousing even the smallest degree of this pleasure..."
As late as 1944, Pius XII had said: "If the exclusive aim of nature or at least its primary intent had been the mutual giving and possessing of husband and wife in pleasure and delight; if nature had arranged that act only to make their personal experience joyous in the highest degree, and not as an incentive in the service of life; then the Creator would have made use of another plan in the formation of the marital act..."
In direct opposition to that papal statement Vatican Council II declared: "[Conjugal] love is uniquely expressed and perfected within the marital act. The actions within marriage by which a couple are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones. Expressed in a manner that is truly human these actions signify and promote the mutual giving by which the spouses enrich each other with a joyful and thankful will."
With Pope John's council, the Catholic Church had made a heroic effort to look realistically at the signs of the times. Turning its theological thinking upside down, the council decided to consult the facts of life before applying moral principles to the regulation of human conduct. It acknowledged love and mutual assistance as fundamental features of the marital union; and, while continuing the ban on sexual indulgence, it acknowledged the necessity of responsible parenthood. The council's pastoral constitution described marriage as a "togetherness in love and life," acknowledging that carnal affection was endowed by the Creator with "special gifts of healing, perfecting and exalting" the spouses in grace and charity.
Despite this achievement of fifteen years ago, a preconciliar sexophobia seems to have resurfaced within the Church's hierarchy. To be sure, the Polish Pontiff has frequently denied that a Manichaean streak of sexual embarrassment predominates in Vatican thinking, and he has attempted in the course of weekly audiences over the past year to stress the personal rather than the procreative aspect of married love. Nevertheless, the result of the 1980 World Synod of Bishops on "The Role of the Christian Family in the World of Today" has been an attempt to restore the notion of procreation as the primary end of marriage to its preconciliar dominance. At the same time, both Pope and synod ignored the pleas made by diocesan cardinals and prelates for a compassionate approach to the marital problems of their people. The synodal structure was dominated by intransigent Vatican functionaries still wedded to a pre-Copernican concept of the universe, and behind all lay the obsessive dread of hedonism—represented by sex—that still afflicts many Rome-oriented prelates and theologians.
As cardinals, bishops, theologians, and journalists descended on the Eternal City for the synod in late September, they were involved in a tradition that went back beyond the practice of the primitive Church to the administrative customs of the Roman Empire. A synodos was a meeting of roads where the civil and military governors of the colonial provinces gathered to discuss problems and policies in the light of the emperor's instructions.
Almost immediately after achieving a relative catholicity, early Church leaders found it necessary to imitate imperial practices by holding local meetings of bishops to evaluate difficulties regarding doctrine and discipline. There is evidence of this practice during the latter half of the second century. Under Bishop Denis of Corinth, around 180 A.D., a series of synods was inaugurated to deal precisely with an alleviation of the Church's rigorist attitude toward adultery and other marital problems.
The Oriental churches, particularly at Constantinople, established a so-called synodos endemousa , or permanent synod, imitated today in the sobornost of Russian and other Orthodox synodal assemblies. In these gatherings, the testimony of prelates, theologians, and lay experts regarding doctrinal and disciplinary problems is weighed in the light of tradition and of contemporary necessities under the guidance of the patriarch. Gradually a consensus is achieved and attributed to the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Only then can the patriarch make a pronouncement, which has to be in keeping with the mind of the synod.
Pope Paul VI sought to reintroduce this synodal machinery into the government of the Catholic Church immediately after Vatican Council II in compliance with the assembly's call for collegiality—the rule of the Church at the top by the bishops with and under the Pope.
The first of these triennial Roman synods was held in the fall of 1967. Its path was not smooth. Curial cardinals, particularly Alfredo Ottaviani and Michael Browne of the ancien Holy Office, sought to intimidate Pope and prelates with the charge that heresy was rife throughout the Church. But the bishops in attendance rejected this contention and achieved a substantial independence in their discussions and decisions. A permanent secretariat of elected noncurial prelates was established with headquarters in Rome to prepare for future synods.
The special synod of 1969—called to discuss the use and abuse of authority in the Church—achieved an explicit acknowledgment of the new orientation of Catholic theological thinking. The synod rejected a priori reasoning in the solution of pastoral problems; consideration was given instead to the sensus fidelium ("the mind of the faithful") in the formulation of the Church's teaching. This procedure was actually a return to the origins of Christian theology, in which the elements of the Church's ethical teaching were adapted to the cultural practices of the local communities—Judaic, Greek, and Oriental—to constitute the Christian way of life. Thus a pluralism in its ethical thinking characterized the Christian Church from its beginnings. At Vatican Council II the Eastern churches played a decisive part in their witness to pluralistic solutions for doctrinal and disciplinary problems.
It was therefore taken for granted that Pope Paul wanted the synod to develop into a true sounding board for the Church's universal self-awareness. Eventually, it was to be hoped, the assembly would grow into a sort of parliament. It would relieve the Holy Father of the present curial structure, which governs the Church through countless directives regarding the sacraments, clerical conduct, education and marriage, and so forth, to which the Pope lends his authority.
A comparative freedom of discussion was exercised by the bishops at the 1969 synod. However, with the synod of 1971, which concentrated principally on the problems of the priesthood, curial control suddenly reasserted itself. Debate on the request for optional celibacy in the Western Church was curtailed and the synodal conclusions were dictated by "higher authority" within the papal household. The curia employed similar though less obvious tactics in the synods of 1974 and 1977, which discussed, respectively, evangelization and catechesis, or Christian formation.
A political truth quickly surfaced in the postconciliar period. When Rome consulted the diocesan bishops individually, the Vatican authorities usually obtained answers in keeping with their desires. But when these prelates were assembled in a council or a synod, they achieved the courage to speak their minds. In dealing with this phenomenon, curial officials had learned to allow a free discussion of synodal issues during the general sessions and only gradually to exercise a refined guidance in the inner group discussions. By reserving the publication of the synod's decisions to the Pope, they had full control over its results.
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In the simplest of terms, a virus is an infectious agent. It operates like a computer virus, replicating and dispersing itself in all directions, while crippling the normal function of the host. A virus has genes, but no cellular structure, so it's not considered a living organism. And like parasites, viruses can't survive on their own. Bacteria, on the other hand, are tiny cells that reproduce and can survive independently, with the ability to transport dangerous toxins.
Epidemiologists generally rely on an international but informal network of colleagues to get wind of a disease outbreak fast, even when it starts in a remote corner of the world. But while patients may be lining the hospital corridors in Jakarta, Veracruz or Pittsburgh, activating a worldwide emergency response protocol is not instantaneous. Laboratory tests must first isolate the virus, microbe, toxin or other mechanism of injury. Usually, scientists in the field must collaborate with researchers in other countries to identify the culprit. And only when the team is absolutely sure about the agent and its cause will entities like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) spring into action. That's when the country alerts go out, a vaccine (or other remedy) gets developed, and the counterattack begins.
Getting Ahead of The Curve
In 1999, the CDC initiated the Laboratory Response Network (LRN), a group of local, state, federal, and international labs that can test for disease agents and develop vaccines in a fast, efficient manner. An estimated ninety percent of the U.S. population now live within a 100 miles of a designated lab. This close proximity insures a quick turnaround as evidence in the field is procured, then shipped to epidemiologists ready to analyze it.
To help get a jump on the next global pandemic, the CDC also dispatches scientists worldwide each year to sniff out virulent strains that may be on the prowl. The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) recruits 70-80 college graduates annually for two-year, post-graduate assignments performing surveillance and study in the field.
Influenza viruses that affect humans are divided into two basic groups. "A" viruses have pandemic potential. "B" viruses don't. To qualify as a pandemic, an "A" virus must also be "novel", which means there's no pre-disposed immunity to it and no existing vaccines. Furthermore, the bug must have the potential for human to human transmission.
Diagram of the 1918 H1N1 Spanish Flu Virus. Photo: University of Washington School of Medicine
Other things to note about pandemic virus:
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the continued spread of the avian H5N1 virus across much of eastern Asia, Russia, and eastern Europe represents the most significant pandemic threat out there today. Human avian H5N1 influenza infection was first recognized in 1997 when it infected 18 people in Hong Kong, causing 6 deaths. Concern has increased in recent years as avian H5N1 infections have killed poultry flocks in countries throughout Asia and in parts of Europe. Since 2003, over 100 human H5N1 cases have been diagnosed in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. HHS believes the virus is worrisome because:
Reports of new cases worldwide have continued to pour in through 2011. In March alone, Egypt reported its 131th case, Bangladesh reported its 67th outbreak, while public health officials in Japan, Myanmar, South Korea, India, Israel and Gaza all discovered its presence in poultry and other species. See the timeline (PDF) prepared by WHO.
While cases of human infection are rare, avian influenza is very contagious among birds and some of these viruses can sicken certain domesticated species, like chickens, ducks, and turkeys.
While H5N1 remains the top pandemic threat today, additional avian flu subtypes are entering the fray. In 1999, H9N2 infections were identified in Hong Kong; in 2003, H7N7 infections occurred in the Netherlands; and in 2004, H7N3 infections occurred in Canada. Such outbreaks have the potential to generate a pandemic, the CDC claims, reinforcing the need for continued surveillance and ongoing vaccine research.
In the case of a major nationwide pandemic, the CDC has established the following priority groups for vaccine distribution:
Vaccines are produced by pharmaceutical companies, often under a contract from the U.S. Government. Over 200 million doses, for instance, were ordered at the start of the H1N1 pandemic. In addition to pandemic vaccines, drug manufacturers produce the annual flu shot vaccine and chilhood immunization drugs for polio, chicken pox, German measles, etc. Immunizations for adults include hepatitus, malaria and tetanus. Some of these shots have only a short-term effectiveness. In the case of tetanus, for instance, a "booster" shot is recommended every ten years.
Vaccines are divided into other categories based on how the drug intends to destroy the targetted microbe or pathogen. Since viruses, bacteria and toxins attack the body in different ways, the epidemiologist must design a solution that works best for the circumstances. Here are his choices:
Live, attenuated vaccines
These contain a version of the living microbe that has been weakened in the lab so it can’t cause disease. Like firefighters setting small fires in advance of a mega-blaze, this small dose of the killer pathogen is easy for the immune system to fight off, thereby achieving lifelong immunity with one or two doses. However, people with compromised immune systems are considered too weak to overcome a live vaccine. Besides that, the microbe that's injected may on occasion morph into something worse than it was initially. These vaccines are likewise not suitable for some geographical locations, since a "live" vaccine must be kept alive through refrigeration.
Samples of the disease-causing microbe are first destroyed with chemicals, heat, or radiation. These vaccines are more stable and safer than live vaccines, since the dead microbes can’t mutate back to their disease-causing state. Inactivated vaccines usually don’t require refrigeration, and they can be easily stored and transported in a freeze-dried form, which makes them accessible to people in developing countries. On the down side, they trigger a weaker immune system response and therefore require multiple doses over time or booster shots to be effective.
These use only parts of the killer microbe, specifically the antigens, which are responsible for triggering the production of antibodies to fight the microbe. It takes a long time to develop a subunit vaccine, but once it's perfected, adverse reactions are much lower than with live or inactivated vaccines. These vaccines are a good choice for people with compromised immune systems.
Some bacteria secrete toxins or harmful chemicals, which can cause a serious illness all by themselves. The toxins can in some cases be neutralized by treating them with formalin, which is a solution of formaldehyde and sterilized water. Such “detoxified” toxins are called toxoids and are safe for use as vaccines.When injected, the toxoid causes the immune system to fight off the natural toxin and produce antibodies that will block the real toxin. Diphtheria and tetanus are examples of diseases that toxoid vaccines can prevent.
The immature immune systems of infants and younger children don't always recognize or respond to certain types of coatings around bacteria, so this special type of subunit vaccine has been developed to address the problem.
Still in the experimental stages, these vaccines show great promise (according to NIH), and several types are currently being tested in humans. These vaccines dispense with the microbe and its parts, and instead use the genes of those all-important antigens.
Recombinant vector vaccines
Also in the experimental stage, these are similar to DNA vaccines, but they use an attenuated virus or bacterium to introduce microbial DNA to cells of the body. “Vector” refers to the virus or bacterium used as the disease carrier. (For instance, mosquitoes carry malaria, so it's considered a "vector-bourne" disease.)
In addition to antigens that alert the immune system to an infectious agent, vaccines may also contain substances called adjuvants, which NIH says improve the immune response produced by the vaccines. Currently, the only adjuvant licensed for human use in the United States is an “alum” adjuvant, which is composed of aluminum salts.
Vaccines may also contain substances to prevent contamination, as well as maintain a vaccine’s potency at less-than-optimal temperatures, or act as a preservative. One such controversial ingredient in this catgegory is a compound call thimerosal.
Autism advocacy organizations oppose the use of thimerasol and other mercury-based additives in vaccines. They allege that autism is caused in part by these ingredients when multiple childhood immunizations are administered at one time. The claim is virulently rejected by the CDC and much of the western medical establishment. In recent years, however, thimerasol use in vaccines has been reduced. Autism advocates urge parents to observe the following cautions when getting vaccines for their kids or themselves:
For information on specific bacterial diseases and viruses, please check the second column on this page.
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"New Strain of Bird Flu Causing Deaths in China." Asian Pacific Post 4/17/13.
"Sri Lanka Red Rain may have a cosmic connection." Sinhalaya News 11/18/12
"Yosemite tourist dies after contracting hantavirus." Associated Press 8/17/12
"Amid severe outbreak, is it time for a whooping cough booster?"Los Angeles Times 7/20/12.
"Sepsis: An Infection, Unnoticed, Turns Unstoppable." By Jim Dwyer. New York Times 7/9/12.
"How the Swine Flu Pandemic Got Started." by Michael Friscolanti and Charlie Gillis. Macleans 5/1/09.
"1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics." By Jeffery K. Taubenberger and David M. Morens (2006)
"Health officials issue alert about Valley fever in County." Stockton Record 6/12/12.
Omaha sees outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria cases." Radio Iowa 6/11/12
Epidemics and Plagues
University of Hartford
International travel and health info
World Health Organization
Emergency Preparedness for Pandemic - Eight-week Supply List (PDF)
HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan
U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Svs
Weekly Epidemiological Record
Latest disease news from WHO
Global Influenza Virological Surveillance WHO Global Alert and Response
Oklahoma State Univ. Center for Health Sciences
DVD's, Videos and TV Programs
Preventative tips to limit exposure to viruses, bacteria and flu outbreaks YouTube
Mega Disasters: "Pandemics and Alien Infection" - Season 2, Episode 7. The History Channel At Amazon...
After Armageddon. 2-hour docudrama examines the potential of a lethal flu virus spreading quickly across the United States.
The History Channel At Amazon...
The Plague. 2-hour documentary tracks the 15th Century pandemic that killed tens of millions.
The History Channel Buy at Amazon...
How A Virus Invades Your Body
H1N1 virus and the 1918 pandemic
The Bubonic Plague
Epidemics - Old and New
The Plague, which still claims thousands of victims each year, has been traced not to a virus but to a bacteria called Yersinia pestis. It typically originates in the Indian rat flea, known scientifically as Xenopsylla cheopsis, of which only the adult females live off their hosts. This dreaded world traveler can survive up to a year on a host (especially rodunts), in dung, an abandoned rodent's nest or in textile bales.
Xenopsylla cheopsis, the killer flea.
Historically, human infection has occurred in three different ways:
Bubonic Plague - Caused when the victim gets bit by an infected flea. Here, the trademark symptom is painful swelling of the lymph glands in the armpits, groin or neck. The swelling creates ball-like buboes, hence the name bubonic plague. Red spots also appear on the skin and eventually turn black. Victims usually vomit blood and die within about three days without antibiotics.
Pneumonic Plague - The bacteria in this case is transmitted primarily through air, usually coughing, thus entering the respiratory tract. People who dissect or handle contaminated animal tissue are also susceptible. Symptoms include fever, coughing up blood and pneumonia leading to respiratory failure and shock within a few days. Most modern cases have occurred in Africa.
Septicemic Plague - Most often transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected rodent or bug, or through an opening in the skin or by cough from another infected human. This is the rarest type of Plague but the deadliest, as it causes sepsis. Cities along trade routes, especially Venice and Florence, were hit hardest during the Medieval epidemic. Symptoms include stomach ache, diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, low blood pressure and lack of blood clotting.
Today, most cases of Plague occur in Africa, but 10-15 reports are logged in the United States annually, mostly in rural areas of the western states. Bats and rats are known to carry the flea.
Now for the big epidemics caused by viruses:
1918 Spanish Influenza - Still cloaked in mystery, this virus was responsible for infecting half a billion people worldwide, killing 50 million. Unlike other pandemics, this one struck on multiple continents on the same day. The infectious agent triggers an overreaction in the human immune system of mostly young, healthy adults. Like the simultaneous appearance, this feature of H1N1 (1918) also also diverges from the usual pattern. The lungs often became inflamed, leading to death. The original virus struck remote corners of the world, especially Alaska, leading a few researchers to suggest that it must have passed down through the atmosphere from outer space.
A theory known as Panspermia alleges that microbes are transmitted onto Earth via passing comets. Microbes may even be the source of all biological life on the planet. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology is the leading authority on comet-based microbes and viruses. (For more on his work, here's the school's website.)
Smallpox - An estimated 300 million deaths were recorded in the 20th Century alone. Because naturally occurring smallpox was wiped out worldwide by the 1970's, vaccinations stopped. According to the CDC, a case of smallpox today would be the result of an intentional act. Strains of the virus are kept in two approved labs in the U.S. and Russia. The CDC also states that "credible concern exists that the virus was made into a weapon by some countries and that terrorists may have obtained it. "
Polio - Largely unrecorded until the 19th century, recurring epidemics of the Poliomyelitis virus continued into the 20th until a vaccine was discovered. The disease is also known as infantile paralysis, but affects adults as well as children. In a typical case, a fever and other flu symptoms set in, followed eventually by paralysis in the lower half of the body.
Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers - A mostly rodunt-borne set of viruses made its first curtain call in the latter twentieth century, appearing on all continents. However cases usually remain localized. Ticks and mosquitoes may also carry the bug, which targets the vascular system, along with several organs in the body. The bleeding for which the disease is named is itself rarely life-threatening. Slaughterhouse workers have a much greater chance of contracting the virus than others.
HIV - Human Immunodeficiency Virus is a retrovirus discovered in the 1980s by Robert Gallo, but that identification was immediately surrounded in controversy. In particular, the so-called "father of retroviruses" Peter Duesberg dismissed Gallo's conclusions, claiming there was no virological evidence to back-up the HIV-AIDS connection. (This led many African governments to ban the use of anti-HIV drugs.) Duesberg believes HIV is biochemically inactive and harmless, and that the cause of AIDS may be toxicological (i.e. a toxic substance). There is still no satisfactory treatment, although a variety of new drugs has vastly reduced the number of fatalitiies.
West Nile Virus - Carried by mosquitoes, this virus first appeared in the United States in 1999, but got its start seventy years earlier in Uganda. It can produce a mild fever and other flu symptoms, and sometimes a rash, but 80 percent of those infected have no adverse reaction. In severe cases, encephalitis or meningitis may develop, but only one person out of every 150 infected falls into this category. Here's a CDC map of most recently reported cases.
SARS - Severe acute respiratory syndrome started in Hong Kong in 2002 and eventually infected a relatively small number of individuals in 37 countries. It targetted the lungs, caused fever and low white blood cell counts. There were appoximately 8,500 cases and 900 deaths. SARS is considered contained and there's no screening for it.
H1N1 Swine Flu - First appearing in Veracruz, Mexico, this 2009 version of an H1N1virus is thought to be a mutation or combination of previous bird, swine and human flu viruses. A Eurasian pig flu virus was also involved, hence the term "Swine Flu". H1N1 was not spread through eating pork products, however, but contracted through respiratory droplets circulating in the air (like other most other forms of influenza). In a small percentage of people exposed, the virus caused pneumonia or acute respiratory problems. The widespread public emergency surrounding it was offically put to rest by WHO in 2010.
Valley Fever - While not a contagion, Valley fever is carried by spores of the fungus Coccidioides immitis, found in soils of the southwestern United States and Central Valley of California, as well as parts of Africa, Central and South America. Wind is generally credited with transporting the spores, but digging, construction work or farming can likewise cause the spores to become airborne.
Dust containing the spores enters a person's lungs, which can sometimes lead to illness. Exposure is most common in the dry, late summer months, with most cases reported to medical personnel in the fall and early winter. It takes 5-21 days on average for flu-like symptoms to show up.
Those exposed to dust while working outside should consider wearing a close-fitting mask. Early recognition and treatment of Valley fever's flu-like symptoms is important to avert more serious complications.
Flesh-Eating Bacteria - Formally known as necrotizing fasciitis, it's caused by a toxin found in several types of bacteria. Infection is rare, with 500-1,000 cases per year reported in the United States. Aimee Copeland, a young Georgia woman, recently put this dirge on the map after a zipline accident and 22 stitches led to an infection. Open wounds and hospital surgery are the prime vehicles, with 25 percent of victims dying.
If you get a cut or wound that becomes increasingly painful, red and swollen, the bacteria may be present. Go to the emergency room immediately, as time is of the essence. First aid for any wound should always include thorough washing of the exposed area with soap and water, and if possible, application of an anti-biotic ointment.
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Q. We are in the preliminary stages of bidding on what designers hope to be a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) structure. We are considering developing a “green” concrete mix design using blended cements. In our research, we discovered there have been recent changes to the ASTM standards for blended cements.
What were these changes?
A. Interest in blended cement products has been increasing, with many producers finding these premixed cements useful in customizing mix designs. Experts define blended cements as “portland-based cements that include supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), such as ground granulated blast furnace slag, fly ash, or other pozzolans, such as silica fume or meta-kaolin.” Delivered as a premixed blend, producers need to only use one silo in their plant.
Recognizing this increased use, ASTM C 595-06, Standard Specification for Blended Cements, was released in August 2006 with some important changes to nomenclature. The committee responsible for the specification simplified the document, hoping to make it easier to use. The committee also wanted to eliminate a problem with producing cements near the boundaries.
For example, under the previous standard, the old Type IP cement contained between 15% and 40% pozzolan, while a Type I(PM) cement contained between 0% and 15% pozzolan. These definitions made it almost impossible for a manufacturer to produce a blended cement with about 15% fly ash, since as with normal process variation, it would sometimes be classified as a Type IP and sometimes a Type I(PM).
To solve this, the new standard eliminates both classification types. They were replaced by Type IP(X) classification, where the X stands for the nominal percentage of the SCM included in the blended cement. For example, a cement designated as Type IP(20) contains 20% pozzolan by mass.
This change will facilitate communication between the cement suppliers, producers, and engineers for quantifying the amounts of SCM in concrete mixes. It will help producers when considering adding SCMs on projects where the mix may be subject to restrictions on the total amount of SCMs in the concrete.
Here is a summary of the changes found in the new document:Type I(PM), I(SM), I(PM)-A, I(SM)-A, and S were eliminated.New portland-pozzolan cement, Type IP(X), can include between 0% and 40% pozzolans, replacing old Types IP and I(PM).New portland blast furnace slag cement, Type IS(X), can include between 0% and 95% ground granulated blast furnace slag, replacing the old Types IS, I(SM), and S.The letter X stands for the nominal percentage of the SCM included in the blended cements.
This topic was recently covered in the December 2006 edition of Concrete Technology, published by the Portland Cement Association (PCA) and is the source of some of the information contained in our reply.
E-mailed six times a year, Concrete Technology includes the latest edition of Concrete Technology Today in alternate issues, information on materials, concrete topics, common questions, industry resources, and news on current events in the cement industry. To subscribe to this free newsletter visit the PCA at www.cement.org, or e-mail [email protected].
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Fly ash isn't just filler in concrete. As a very fine-grained pozzolan, it reacts with the calcium hydroxide that is generated by the hydration reaction of cement and water to take on cementitious properties of its own. The reaction makes concrete stronger, less permeable, and reduces the alkalinity, which can reduce the danger of alkali-silica reactivity in the aggregate—and the need in some parts of the country to import nonreactive aggregate from distant sources.
Fly ash concrete is more workable and pumpable. It also hydrates more slowly, which reduces the heat of hydration—critical to reducing cracking in mass concrete placements. All of this makes fly ash concrete more durable than plain portland cement concrete. And concrete with fly ash costs less, because fly ash is typically less expensive than portland cement.
Due to all these advantages, fly ash is used in about half the concrete placed today. NRMCA estimates that 15% of cementitious materials in concrete are replaced by fly ash and other supplementary cementitious materials. Typically specified as a percentage replacement for portland cement, both Class C and Class F ash is used at dosages as high as 50% (although 15% is more common).
But the percentage of fly ash use has been increasing. To achieve a more sustainable concrete, producers and engineers have been increasing replacement rates. One recent study used fly ash at replacement rates up to 30% with no adverse results on a hard-troweled concrete floor (see “Adding Fly Ash to Concrete Mixes for Floor Construction” CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION Special Floors Issue, November 2007).
There is a limit to how much fly ash our industry can use. First, not all fly ash is equal. “Every power plant has its idiosyncrasies” says Morris “Skip” Huffman, former chairman of ACI Committee 232, Fly Ash, and division manager with Headwaters Resources, a marketer of fly ash. “The quality can vary, depending on exactly how the plant is being run. Some fly ashes have higher sulfur trioxide (SO3) contents and are not suitable for use in concrete. Some have problems with higher carbon content or they are too coarse. But the majority of ash, especially in the western U.S., is suitable for use in concrete and can go straight from the plant to the silo.”
And contractors often object to using fly ash concrete. These concerns include set time, air content, and strength gain. Some fly ash can retard hydration and lead to longer set times and slower strength gain. And some can lead to loss of entrained air. An experienced concrete producer can easily overcome these issues. In January 2006 CC, (Using High Volume Fly Ash Concrete), Lattimore Materials' Richard Szecsy notes that even at replacement rates as high as 50%, the set time and strength gain can be controlled using admixtures and proportioning.Why a hazardous waste?
No one argues that containment pond failures are acceptable—they are not. And no one doubts that there should be tighter regulations governing their design, construction, and maintenance. But to many proponents supporting fly ash use in concrete, regulating final disposal methods is a completely separate matter than designating fly ash as a hazardous waste under Subtitle C.
The problem is that the EPA wants more authority than the current law allows. At the September 2009 meeting of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), Matt Hale, director of EPA's Office of Resource Conservation & Recovery, said that while he believes that regulating fly ash under Subtitle D would be sufficient to protect public health and the environment, it doesn't provide the EPA with the authority to enforce more stringent disposal requirements.
InsideEPA.com reports that the agecy's current proposal is an unusual “hybrid” approach: designating fly ash as hazardous if it's disposed of in a containment pond or landfill but not hazardous when recycled for “beneficial uses.” This proposal could mean that producers and power plants would have to transport, store, and treat fly ash as a hazardous waste in its powder form, but not after it's incorporated into concrete.
However well-intended, a hybrid approach to fly ash classification would cause our nation significant problems.
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Autism and Aspergers - 04-10-2007, 08:07 AM
(taken from Wikipedia)
Autism is classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and American Psychological Association as a developmental disability that results from a disorder of the human central nervous system. It is diagnosed using specific criteria for impairments to social interaction, communication, interests, imagination and activities. The causes, symptoms, etiology, treatment, and other issues are controversial.
Autism manifests itself "before the age of three years" according to the WHO's International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) Children with autism are marked by delays in their "social interaction, language as used in social communication, or symbolic or imaginative play" (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
Autism, and the other four pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), are all considered to be neurodevelopmental disorders. They are diagnosed on the basis of a triad, or group of three behavioral impairments or dysfunctions: 1. impaired social interaction, 2. impaired communication and 3. restricted and repetitive interests and activities. These three basic characteristics reflect Dr. Leo Kanner's first reports of autism emphasizing "autistic aloneness" and "insistence on sameness."
From a physiological standpoint, autism is often less than obvious in that outward appearance may not indicate a disorder. Diagnosis typically comes from a complete patient history and physical and neurological evaluation.
The incidence of diagnosed autism has increased since the 1990s. Reasons offered for this phenomenon include better diagnosis, wider public awareness of the condition, regional variations in diagnostic criteria, or simply an increase in the occurrence of ASD (autism spectrum disorders). The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimate the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders to be about one in every 150 children. In 2005, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) stated the "best conservative estimate" as 1 in 1000. In 2006, NIMH estimated that the incidence was 2-6 in every 1000.
There are numerous theories as to the specific causes of autism, but they have yet to be fully supported by evidence (see section on "Causes" below). Proposed factors include genetic influence, anatomical variations (e.g. head circumference), abnormal blood vessel function and oxidative stress. Their significance as well as implications for treatment remain speculative.
Conversely, some autistic children and adults are opposed to attempts to cure autism. These people see autism as part of who they are, and in some cases they perceive treatments and attempts of a cure to be unethical.
On the surface, individuals who have autism are physically indistinguishable from those without. Some studies show that autistic children tend to have larger head circumferences but the significance in the disorder is unclear. Sometimes autism co-occurs with other disorders, and in those cases outward differences may be apparent.
Individuals diagnosed with autism can vary greatly in skills and behaviors, and their response to sensory input shows marked differences in a number of ways from that of other people. Certain stimulations, such as sounds, lights, and touch, will often affect someone with autism differently than someone without, and the degree to which the sensory system is affected can vary greatly from one individual to another.
Autistic children may display unusual behaviors or fail to display expected behaviors. Normal behaviors may develop at the appropriate age and then disappear or, conversely, are delayed and develop quite some time after normal occurrence.In assessing developmental delays, different physicians may not always arrive at the same conclusions. Much of this difference between diagnosis is due to the disputed criteria for autism.
Deciding how a child should behave is also difficult because diagnostic tests have to be objective, which is not a simple thing to accomplish.Because of this practitioners and researchers in pediatrics, child psychology, behavior analysis, and child development are always looking for early indicators of autism.
The diagnosis of autism must meet specific criterion but there are also many characteristics that are idiosyncratic. Thus, Autism is not a "one size fits all" label. In other words the spectrum disorder encompasses a very wide range of behaviors and symptoms.
Some behaviors cited by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (listed below) may simply mean a normal delay in one or more areas of development, while others are more typical of ASDs—Autistic Spectrum Disorders.
The list below is not all-inclusive, and generally applies to children and not adults. Furthermore, while some of these behaviors might be seen in a person with autism, others may be absent.
Noted Behaviors in Children
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Recently, I've been attempting to grind and sift my own flour. The grinding is straightforward with a Retsel Mil-Rite, an excellent home stone buhr mill or my new Meadows 8-inch stone mill. However, the mysteries of sifting the flour have been less straightforward. A subsequent blog entry will deal with my progress on grinding and sifting my own flour. The sifting project motivates the need for measuring the ash content of my flour.
Ash content in general is the percentage of inorganic matter in a sample of some material. It is used in many different ways to analyze agricultural products, at least, based on some cursory sampling of articles on the internet.
About.com says defines ash content as:
The nonvolatile inorganic matter of a compound which remains after subjecting it to a high decomposition temperature.
A traditional method for determining ash content is to place a sample of known weight in a furnace at high temperature (600F or higher) for a number of hours (12 hours, for example) such that all the water, volatile compounds, and organic matter either evaporate or burn. After that, the remaining material is weighed. Ash content is the weight of remaining "ash" expressed as a percentage of the original weight of the sample. The remaning mass will be the inorganic non-volatile compounds that were in the original sample.
Flour ash content in Europe is measured using a dessicated (dried out) sample of flour, so the original weight of the sample doesn't contain any water. In the US, a moisture content of 14% is assumed (typical for white flour before it is dried out), so US numbers for ash content differ from the same European measure by the amount of water in the original sample.
An Important Characterizing Measure of Wheat Flour
Ash content is widely used in Europe to classify flours. When you see "type 55", for example, the 55 refers to the ash content, which would be 0.55% of dry matter in this flour. In the US, it is often available by searching a manufacturer's or supplier's web site for flour specifications (often hidden somewhere hard to find), or more often, by calling someone in their testing department.
Why Ash Content
The inorganic matter in a wheat berry is heavily concentrated in the outer layers, such as the bran, various seed coatings, and the germ. As you traverse from the outer coatings to the outer endosperm and then to the inner endosperm, the concentration of inorganic matter steadily drops.
During milling, the flour is ground, then sifted, then ground again, and sifted again repeatedly. When the milling process is complete, a large number of bins of product will result from very coarse to very fine, and from very dark to very light flours. The whitest flours will have less ash content, and the darker flours will have more ash content. At this point, various grades of flour may be created by blending the flour from the bins.
Ash content then summarizes how much of the outer layers made it in to the final flour, regardless of how it may have been milled, sifted, and blended.
The importance of measuring ash content was immediately obvious to me as I tried to mill and sift at home on my own. An infinite number of possible permutations of grinding and milling could be imagined. For example, I tried grinding very coarsely, then sifting, then grinding the coarser results of the sifting again, then sifting again. Another version was grinding very finely and sifting into more and finer sizes. I also tried grinding coarsely, then regrinding, then sifting. Of course, the possibilities are endless. In each of these cases, flour resulted that made good bread, seemed light in color, and fine in texture. The difference to the eye and the feel in the hand was not great between one and the other, at least not to me, a first-time home miller.
Measuring ash content of my results would make it possible to know at least approximately how much of the outer layers had made it into each type of flour resulting from the various grinding and sifting processes tried. Also, once a given process is adopted and used consistently, calculating the right blend of the various outputs of the milling process to achieve a desired ash content, depending on the type of flour needed, should also be fairly easy.
Distilled water doesn't conduct electricity. However, if some salt is dissolved in distilled water, it will conduct electricity. The ions contributed by the salt are charged particles that will travel through the water in the field created by the voltage difference on the electrodes of the conductivity meter to create a flow of electric current. The higher the concentration of salt, the higher the conductivity of the water and salt solution will be. The diverse mineral content in the inorganic matter that makes up the "ash content" of the flour ionizes the water in the same way described above for salt. If the flour has a larger amount of "ash content" it will also contribute a larger quantity of ionizing compounds to water, increasing the conductivity.
To measure conductivity you need a conductivity meter. In the field of water quality measurement, "Total Dissolved Solids" is a standard measurement, but it is essentially a measure of the conductivity of the water being tested. So, you can use either a "conductivity meter" or a "TDS Meter". In my case, I had obtained a Hanna 9813 pH meter a number of years ago, and it turns out it also had a conductivity meter function. However, it was easy to discover conductivity meters on the internet, by searching on terms like "Conductivity Meter", "TDS", "Total Dissolved Solids", "Water Quality Meter", and so on. One place I found was http://www.technika.com. Also searching on "Hannah Meter" might work, since that's the brand of meter I have that has both pH and conductivity meters, both useful functions for flour measurement.
You might wonder why a standard digital multi-meter wouldn't work. I tried to use one unsuccessfully. First of all, you would have to carefully mount the probes to maintain the same distance apart and total surface area exposed to the water. However, it gets worse. The DC current used by a digital multi-meter to measure resistance causes the ions to build up on the electrodes, so the measurement just goes higher and higher the longer you leave the electrodes in the water. Conductivity meters made for measuring water impurities use AC current to measure the conductivity so the above problem with an ohm-meter doesn't occur, have probes made of less reactive conductors, and are designed to maintain proper spacing of the electrodes.
I found a couple of papers on the internet describing methods of measuring ash content with conductivity. One was especially useful for home measurements and was titled, "Electrical Conductivity of Flour Suspensions and Extracts in Relation to Flour Ash." published in 1977 in the Journal of Cereal Chemistry. The method described below was derived from the discussion in this paper.
The method is very simple. Mix 100 grams of distilled water (should be distilled water to get good results) and add 5 grams of the flour to be tested in a container. Stir thoroughly to completely hydrate the flour. Periodically stir for about 12 hours. After the flour has settled to the bottom of the jar, measure the conductivity of the water. For the best measurement, allow the flour to settle on the bottom so there is clear water to measure. The clear water will have a higher conductivity than recently stirred and cloudy water. At first the conductivity rises, as the various compounds that contribute to the conductivity of the water dissolve, but at some point the conductivity will stabilize. In my case it took a long time, maybe 12 hours or so, for the conductivity to stop changing. The conductivity measured can then be calibrated by measuring flours with known ash content and fitting a curve of conductivity to the known ash content. In practice it looked very linear, so even a simple proportional relationship would give reasonable results, based on my admittedly minimal sampling.
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The table above shows measured conductivity in ppm, as the meter represents it for TDS or "Total Dissolved Solids" in parts per million salts for a hydroponic solution and also shows conductivity in the more standard measure of milli-Siemens per cm. I don't know the ash content, but based on some flour specification information from Heartland Mill, I filled in rough numbers and then used them to approximate the ash content of my "71% yield, fairly white bread flour" sifted from a couple of passes with my new Meadows 8 inch mill and a couple of siftings with a number 60 sieve in my new SS-100 Econo-Shaker sieve shaker.
The method in the paper heated the samples to boil them for a short period, then cooled and centrifuged the samples to create a clear liquid with the dissolved minerals in it. I didn't want to deal with boiling or somehow obtaining a centrifuge. OK, maybe you could put your jars in bags, tie them to some rope and spin them like Argentine "bolas", but I recommend patience. It was unclear what the effects of boiling were from this paper, but it seemed to affect the measurement in some unexpected way. So, my approach is to keep it simple and just wait for the conductivity and the flour to settle, even if it takes a while.
You can obtain a reasonable estimate of ash content by mixing 5 grams of flour with 100 grams of distilled water, stirring periodically for a few hours and then measuring the stabilized conductivity and comparing to the same measurement for some reference flours of known ash content. I proceeded to make one of my favorite miche recipes and found this flour to give very comparable results to Heartland Mill Golden Buffalo flour, which is of similar ash content. The difference is I can mill my own version of the Golden Buffalo flour and obtain it absolutely fresh when called for. In addition, measuring and recording the ash content of the output from the various passes of grinding and sifting should allow me to blend the outputs in the right proportions to obtain a desired ash content for recipes that may call for more refined or less refined flour.
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Bringing hope to families with autistic children, 11 countries from the WHO Southeast Asian Region, at a recent meeting, adopted a resolution on the distinct brain damage disorder that produces a range of behavioural abnormalities. The countries resolved to strengthen national capacities and help mobilise resources in Southeast Asia to address this issue.
Autism is a severely-incapacitating developmental disability that happens in the first three years of life, but can be better dealt with, if detected early. Statistics show that one in every 150 births is autistic. India has more than one crore autistic children, but treatment and rehabilitation facilities are virtually non-existent.
The resolution impressed upon the member states to give appropriate recognition to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and developmental disabilities in policies and programmes related to early childhood development, and asked them to develop and implement policies and plans — including public awareness, stigma removal campaigns, supported with adequate human, financial and technical resources — to address the issue.
The meeting called for development of strategies for early detection and community-based interventions for such children, thereby leading to the creation of appropriate infrastructure for care, support, intervention, service and rehabilitation.
The WHO expressed deep concern on the dramatic rise in the number of children with autism and developmental disabilities, and the growing cost involved in managing such disabilities in addition to the challenges of stigma, isolation, and discrimination faced by families dealing with autism.
To begin with, the 11 countries have agreed to support the activities of autism-related networks, including the South Asia Network (SAAN) — a concept that emerged from the Dhaka Declaration on Autism Spectrum Disorders and Developmental Disabilities, adopted at the end of a conference organised last year by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s daughter, Saima Hossain, to discuss the needs and challenges of the autism community in Bangladesh and South Asia. The conference was attended by United Progressive Alliance chairperson, Sonia Gandhi.
In addition to the 11 countries from Southeast Asia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahamas, United Kingdom and the United States of America participated in the WHO conference.
Taking up the cause of autistic children, India has now decided to hold the first ‘Annual SAAN Regional Networking Meeting’ in January next year.
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- Special Sections
- Public Notices
Robotics courses can teach kids math and programming skills, instructor Jeff Rivera said, but if that’s not enough, there’s always the draw of Legos.
“Everybody loves to play with Legos,” Rivera said.
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College has started its Kids’ College program this summer, offering week-long classes to children covering a variety of topics, from forensic science to video game design.
This week, the college is hosting an intermediate robotics course, one of three robotics courses in the Kids’ College program. Rivera, an associate professor in the electrical technology program, has taught the courses for several years.
The courses use Lego robotic kits. Students learn to build robots and program them to perform tasks. The robots can be programmed to retrieve and carry objects, or push and pull them along a map filled with different pathways. Programming involves a lot of math to determine distances for the path the robot needs to travel, Rivera said.
The courses have proven to be some of the most popular in the Kids’ College program. Rivera said robotics can be found in many professions from medicine to mining.
“Robotics is becoming more and more prevalent in industry and just in everyday life,” he said.
Melissa Broadfoot, 9, enrolled in the courses to explore possibilities in engineering.
“I just wanted to become an engineer or a doctor, so I just wanted to get started on one of those two,” she said.
Justice Smith, 13, is entering his freshman year at John Hardin High School. He had taken a beginning robotics before this week’s course.
“I took one the first time because I like to see how things work,” Smith said.
Smith has enjoyed himself, to the point where he thinks he might want to go into a field using some of the same skills. He’ll never be bored, he said.
“It will always keep my interest,” Smith said.
Kelly Cantrall can be reached at (270) 505-1747 or [email protected].
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This category will be for all the current Classroom Essentials Teacher Binders that are currently listed. Keep in mind that you can also grab the matching CSSS Lesson Planning Packs and CCSS Complete Vocabulary Programs to coordinate as well in those categories! Enjoy!
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If you are using, or going to adopt the Common Core Standards, you are going to want to make your life a while lot easier by checking out these lesson planning packs for grades K-5! The standards used are the National Common Core State Standards - if you are unsure whether your state has adopted them, please check THIS MAP for more information. There are also Common Core Pacing Guides available! Make sure to also check out the coordinating theme Classroom Essentials Sets and Complete Vocabulary Programs!
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New research finds the pathogen E. coli O157:H7 lives about 30 days in soils from California’s Salinas Valley — 10 days more than in the state’s Imperial Valley or Yuma, Ariz.
Lower salinity in Salinas irrigation water is the main cause of the difference, said Mark Ibekwe, a microbiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Riverside, Calif.
Ibekwe and three colleagues published their findings, “Persistence of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Major Leafy Green Producing Soils,” in the journal Environmental Science & Technology in October.
The results were based on laboratory-tested soil samples. Field studies of E. coli are typically limited to nonpathogenic varieties.
Increasing salinity in Salinas water would not be realistic or beneficial for leafy greens growers there, Ibekwe said. Nevertheless, the research underscores the importance of keeping new pathogens from entering the fields.
“You don’t want to introduce another variable into the farming environment that will ultimately cause adverse effects on the crops and result in lower yield,” Ibekwe said. “Because of how salinity will react with other factors there, we are not suggesting that.
“What we’re saying is that because we know there’s a longer survival in the Salinas area, we should be very, very careful in introducing pathogens from manure, poorly composted materials or any source at all into the farming environment,” he said.
Imperial and Yuma irrigation water has higher salinity because it’s drawn from rivers, Ibekwe said, whereas Salinas depends on groundwater.
To a lesser extent, the research also links longer survival to higher levels of organic carbon in Salinas soils. Total nitrogen is another contributor, the scientists said, but that shed little light in this case because the three regions have similar levels.
These factors add to a list of others previously identified such as temperature, pH level and moisture content.
The research was funded by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Agricultural Research Service.
It’s not the only E. coli research tied to the Salinas Valley.
In 2011, Steven Koike, plant pathology farm advisor at University of California Cooperative Extension, Monterey County, began a two-year study of survival on lettuce residue plowed back into soil. That project was funded for $118,000 by the Center for Produce Safety.
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Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives
|Return to: Home > Archives Index > Mass Index|
The Sacrifice Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
The purpose of our present meditation is to explain how the Mass is the sacrifice sacrament of the Eucharist. Again, we will draw on the churchs teaching on the Mass, especially focusing on definitions from the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. We will also examine Pope Pius XIIs teachings on the mass, upon which the Second Vatican Council built its base document on Eucharist liturgy.
The Council of Trent and the Mass
We have been drawing on the churchs teaching at Trent mainly because during the sixteenth century so many Eucharistic dogmas were not only questioned, but openly denied. The teaching of the Council of Trent is teaching of the churchs previous 1500 years, but sharpened and clarified in order to respond to the widespread Eucharistic challenges in the sixteenth century. If there was one dominant feature in the writings of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli in their break with the Roman Catholic Church, it was their claim that Christ never instituted the sacrament of holy orders, which empowers ordained priests to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
With this in mind, we understand why the Council of Trent published nine lengthy formal anathemas condemning anyone who held certain erroneous positions on the sacrifice of the Mass. (As before, each Tridentine document begins with if anyone says . And then for whatever the person is saying, let him be anathema. -- let him be condemned.) Three of these nine definitions are especially pertinent to our subject and should be quoted and explained:
Unfortunately, these statements are not being Circulated or published or taught widely in nominally catholic circles today. And if you look at weekly parish bulletins from some dioceses, you will notice that so few refer to the Mass as a sacrifice or even Mass anymore. It is called a Liturgy or Eucharist. But to be a Catholic means to believe that Christ instituted the sacrifice of the Mass.
So what is the Council of Trent telling us about the sacrifice of the Mass? We are told that the sacrifice of the Mass is a true sacrifice. In the Mass, the same Christ, who offered himself on Calvary, now offers Himself in an unbloody manner on the altar.
The Mass is a true sacrifice because it is the same Jesus really present on the altar through the words of consecration. In the Mass, we have the same priest, Christ, who offers the same victim, Christ. Christ offers himself. At the last supper, Christ ordained his apostles as priests when he told them, do this in remembrance of Me. What had Christ done? He changed bread and wine into his own living person and he offered his flesh and blood to the heavenly father for the redemption of a sinful human race.
Trent tells us that the sacrifice of the Mass is not only a liturgical ceremony, or merely a celebration or merely a remembrance of the sacrifice on Calvary. No, the Mass is a sacrifice. The Mass is the sacrifice, which St. Paul tells us wiped out all the other sacrifices that had been offered until the coming of Christ. Christs death on the cross originally merited the graces to redeem the world, but Christ now actually confers those graces. The sacrifice of the Mass is the channel by which those graces are communicated. We believe the sacrifice on that first Good Friday is re-enacted or re-presented in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass. Christs blood was shed only once -- physically. He died only once, but he dies mystically and spiritually every time mass is offered. His sacrifice is offered to the Father continuously for all men for all eternity.
Moreover, for our purpose, the Mass is a sacrament which pours numerous graces on the human family. What kind of grace does the sacrifice sacrament of the Eucharist confer?
The grace of propitiation for sin. Propitiation means obtaining graces from God that will make up for, amend and expiate the ravages of sin.
The grace of obtaining mercy from God, who removes more or less of the guilt incurred by our sins. Guilt is the loss of divine grace. The word guilt is so common in our language, we had better know what we mean by guilt. In Catholic terms it is not merely a declaration by a court of someone being found guilty of breaking a law. Nor is it merely a psychological emotion or feeling of anxiety. Thus Sigmund Freud was not only a non-believer in a personal god yet, after a lifetime of clinical practice, Freud said he had yet to meet a single client who was not troubled by the sense of guilt. This may be the foundation of psychological disorders, but it is not the guilt of which we are speaking here. Guilt is the loss of grace. And the sacrifice sacrament of the Eucharist restores more or less of that lost grace.
Pope Pius XII and the Sacrifice of the Mass
Why of all pontiffs should we choose Pius XII? Because during his pontificate he wrote extensively on the sacrifice of the Mass, and he laid the groundwork for the liturgical teaching of Vatican II.
Similar to the sixteenth century, many nominal Catholics in the twentieth century have either abandoned their faith entirely or are struggling to remain believing Catholics. Pius XII repeatedly declared that Catholics in this century must deepen their understanding of the Mass. In fact, he said that unless the modern western world rediscovers its need for the sacrifice sacrament of the Eucharist, whole cultures run the risk of losing their Catholic identity.
With this theme for his pontificate, Pius XII on November 20, 1947, published the historic document Mediator Dei --on the sacred liturgy. In more than 30,000 words, he explained that the Mass is absolutely necessary for our salvation. How is this? The Mass is the sacrament through which Christ mainly dispenses graces he won for us on Calvary. Christ died on the cross for our salvation, and having died, he gained the graces we need. But we must have access to those graces. The principal treasury of these graces is the sacrifice sacrament of the Eucharist.
The Pope said: Christ built on Calvary a purifying and saving reservoir which he filled with the blood He poured forth. But if men do not immerse themselves in its waves and do not therefore cleanse themselves of the stains of their sins, they certainly cannot be saved. So when we say the Mass is a sacrament, it means graces are conferred just because Mass is being offered. Thus, we should make sure every priest we know offers Mass every day!
These graces are especially those which have to do with sin and the remission of both guilt (loss of grace) and the punishment for sins. Because the Mass is a sacrament, it confers these graces infallibly. It confers these graces for the whole human race, dependent on the degree of faith a person has and on the moral disposition of the individual.
As we shall see much more clearly later on, it is not enough to believe intellectually in the Mass. It is not enough to attend Mass or even participate in the Mass. We will benefit only as much from the graces of the sacrament of the Mass as we mirror the image of the life of Christ in our lives. His life was one long sacrifice, in the total surrender of his human will to the Father. We are living the Mass in the measure that we constantly surrender our wills to the loving will of God.
How to Pray the Mass
As we have so far said indicates that the Mass is the single most effective source of grace that we have on earth. However, our dispositions in hearing the Mass profoundly affect the measure of grace we receive. Our final reflections, therefore, will be on how to pray the Mass more effectively. Let me make just three recommendations.
Understand the Mass
Whatever else the Mass is, it is a vocal prayer in which every word is vocalized and most of them aloud. Even the most reverently offered Mass takes only a short time. There is no time to be giving much immediate thought to every syllable as it comes along. Hence the wisdom of learning to understand the Mass, know it better, its mysterious meaning and profound significance through periodic reading, meditation and study before-hand. Some years ago I was asked to assemble a bibliography on the Mmass for the Catholic colleges in the United States. The then-current books on the Mmass in English print were over one hundred. I wonder how many Catholics could name, I do not say ten, but even one current title on the Mass. The Mass is, indeed, a mystery. But mysteries are not always to be believed, they are with Gods grace to be ever more clearly understood. We must come to better understand the Mass. A single expression like that of St. Leonard of Port Maurice can affect our whole life. Except for the Mass, he said, being daily offered on thousands of altars, the world would long ago have been destroyed because of its sins. I would summarize this first recommendation by using the imperative verb meditate. Meditate on the Mass.
Plan Your Mass
If the Mass is the important action that faith tells us it is, we should plan for it. It is common knowledge and experience that we plan for things according to the importance we attach to them. Unimportant things we hardly plan for at all, important things we plan for at length, with care. This planning can mean different things. It can mean looking ahead to know what Mass is to be said. If we wait till Mass begins, it will take us ten minutes to find out what to find out what the Mass for today is all about. It can mean that I read the scripture lessons beforehand, the orations, know what or whose feast is to be commemorated in the Mass. It can mean that I have given some thought before Mass to what will be said during the Mass, and I would emphasize, to what I will be thinking about during the Mass. I have taught too many classes not to know, and on occasion I have had to walk into class quite unprepared. An unprepared class I might just as well have called off. It should always mean that I have a definite intention or intentions for which I will offer my Mass. Since the Mass is of infinite value, do not hesitate to multiply the intentions. I would summarize the second recommendation by saying: anticipate the Mass.
Be Attentive During Mass
The degree of participation in the new liturgy is such that most people are almost necessarily kept alert during the offering of the Mass. In fact this is one of the reasons for the vernacular and the antiphonal responses between the priest or the ministers at the altar and the congregation, and the out-loud saying of what used to be silent or very subdued parts of the Eucharist rite. But the attention about which I am speaking here is something more. It is attention not only to the verbal forms being heard or said or the actions of the priest being performed, it is what I call internal attention to the mystery of faith that is being enacted before my eyes. I would compare attendance at Mass to recitation of the rosary. In both cases there are vocal prayer and silent reflection and the two should not conflict but harmonize. What I mean is that it would be well for us to mentally place ourselves --and we have many options -- at the last supper, or the Garden of Gethsemane, or with Christ before Herod, or before Pilate or the Sanhedrin, or on his way to Golgotha, or being nailed, or dying on the cross. Each one of us, according to our own devotion, should unite ourselves in spirit with Christ now as He was then in body. Let us remind ourselves that at the time when He offered His Mass, His first Mass, He had us in mind. Should we not repay him in kind and now have Him in our mind in return? I would summarize this third recommendation as concentrate.
There is one more important observation. We should live the Mass. The human race was redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. But, unlike Calvary, the sacrifice of the Mass is not only Christ offering Himself to his heavenly Father. The Mass is also our sacrifice. Through the Mass, we obtain the grace of self-surrender to the will of God. But we must put this grace to use. We must surrender our wills to the will of God. The measure of our self-surrender to the divine will is the measure of our profiting from the Mass, not just for ourselves but for the whole world. The official Latin of the liturgy when a priest turns to the people to say the orate fratres, reads pray brethren that my sacrifice and yours may be pleasing to God the Father Almighty. What are we being told? We are being told that the Mass is a sacrifice twice over. It is a sacrifice which Jesus makes when the priest consecrates the bread and wine separately, to signify the separation of Christs blood from his body which caused his death. The Mass is also our sacrifice in separating our selfish will in order to surrender ourselves to the will of God. The degree of this self-surrender is the norm by which we profit from the Mass. The more sacrificial our lives the more beneficial is every Mass offered on all the altars of the world every day.
Mary, mother of our redeemer, obtain for us something of the generous surrender of will which you made as you stood under the cross on Calvary. Help us to put into practice the words you spoke at Nazareth when you conceived your divine son. Let the motto of our lives be, be it done to me according to your word. Amen.
Copyright © 1998 by Inter Mirifica
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Need help running your school newspaper or ideas for stories to write for the next issue? This site is a reference resource for Internet high school journalism. It presents sections on the five types of propaganda, common grammar mistakes, and tips on interviewing. A section on censorship defines what it is, the dilemmas of censorship, and a brief history. Learn about a journalist's responsibilities such as being objective, fair, accurate, clear, and complete.
BrettSussex Regional High, Sussex, Canada
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Social Sciences & Culture > Languages & Language Arts > Journalism
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An age-old frontier may separate Northumberland and The Borders, but there is much these two geographical areas share in common.
The political border has shifted many times over the centuries. But the inhabitants have always shared similar customs, habits, a dialect and a common outlook. This is mostly because of the region’s history, which has at times been turbulent and dramatic, but always filled with ideas and innovation.
You can read about the events and forces which shaped the culture in different parts of this site and in particular in the History and Explore sections. The legacy is rich and gives Northumberland and The Scottish Borders its unique forms of music, craft, art, drama and language.
The music is both timeless and beautiful. Northumbrian folk ballads are usually accompanied by the traditional Northumbrian smallpipes, played by pipers dressed in traditional Northumberland Tartan.
The Northumberland Tartan is a tight black and white check which dates back thousands of years. It was originally woven by hill shepherds who only had access to the basic black and white wool from their flock. This tartan provides the basis for the Scottish Estate Tartans of today. See the pattern here at the Northumberland Tartan Company.
Many of the words found in the area’s folk songs and used today are Northumbrian. This dialect reflects many influences – Viking, Norse, Gaelic, German and French.
You’ll either know Northumbrian/Border words because you live here, or you’ve heard them in films and TV shows. Words such as canny (pleasant, good); muckle (big); clart (mud); tetties (potatoes); bairn (child); and deek (look at) are from this part of the world.
Lesser known is the fact that two well-known words, blackmail and bereaved, originated in the Borders. Blackmail was originally a fee paid by locals for protection from pillage, while bereaved is said to come from ‘be reived’, a term that originally applied to the victims of the infamous Border Reivers raids and has now come to mean to suffer a personal loss.
Northumberland has its own flag, the red and gold banner which some claim is the oldest known flag design in Britain.
The design comes from the regal banner of gold and purple which was draped over the tomb of St Oswald, the 7th Century King of Northumbria.
Today, Northumberland/Borders cultural heritage is celebrated in unique,diverse museums and galleries and at festivals throughout the region.
Sites That Link to this Post
- Culture in Northumberland & Scottish Borders | TravelSquare | August 11, 2012
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The study involved the first-ever use on an infectious disease of a new research technique called chemical genetics. Every virus presents scientists with a new kind of genetic code—the challenge is to figure out how to decipher it to gain a fuller understanding of how the virus works and how to combat it. In the past, such research was often slow and laborious. But thanks to chemical genetics—which allows scientists to quickly test how a new virus reacts with thousands of different chemicals—viruses that might have remained indecipherable for years can now be at least partially unlocked in months or even weeks. "Instead of testing out keys in a lock one by one, it's like trying out 50,000 keys all at once," says Yuen.
The point of both chemical and classical genetic research is to figure out which genes do what—in effect, to learn to read an organism's genetic language. In classical genetics, scientists usually mutate an organism, see how its functions have changed (a mutated virus might no longer be infectious) and then work back and identify which gene mutated. If a mutated virus loses its ability to infect a cell, then that gene probably has something to do with infectivity. In chemical genetics, explains Dr. Richard Kao, the lead researcher on the HKU study, scientists try do the same by testing thousands upon thousands of chemicals on virus samples. The vast majority won't have any effect, but a handful will. Researchers can then take those virus samples and use further tests to figure out which viral gene has been affected by which chemical. "If we discover that interfering with a certain gene stops the virus from replicating, then we know that gene's function likely has to do with replication," says Kao, a biochemist who brought his passion for chemical genetics to HKU from Harvard University, where the process was first pioneered in the early 1990s.
In HKU's SARS study, Kao and his colleagues filled the tiny wells of a small, waffle-like board with samples of the coronavirus cultured in cell lines. Microscopic amounts of different chemical compounds were introduced into each separate well using a $180,000 machine called an automated high-throughput screening platform. Once the chemicals had time to interact with the virus, scientists could examine the results with an inverted microscope. The process was repeated until all 50,240 compounds in their chemical library had been tested, which took a few months. "You'd think it'd be tedious work, but it's really not that bad," says Kao. If the chemical failed to interfere with the virus, as was the case with most of them, researchers would easily see evidence of unchecked infection in the cell lines. But about 1,000 compounds seemed to slow the virus, and 104 of those all but stopped infection. It stood to reason that those compounds were hitting the viral genetic pathways that were most important for infectivity.
With help from their collaborators at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, Kao and his colleagues discovered that one of 104 compounds inhibited a kind of viral processing inside the cell, six inhibited viral replication and 18 seemed to prevent the virus from entering the cell in the first place. (Kao says further work will be needed to figure out which viral genes the remaining 78 compounds affect. One of them seems to affect both processing and replication.) A number of these compounds could form the basis for promising anti-SARS drugs, and HKU plans to begin animal-testing some of the most effective compounds soon. But the real value of the study is the clearer picture it offers of the SARS virus and the blueprint it provides for research responses to any future emerging diseases, like avian flu. "We can react more rapidly, and we can find new drugs that specifically target the disease," Kao says. "If there's a new virus, we can jump onto this."
Around HKU, that's a question of when, not if. HKU's work on SARS and bird flu has helped transform a regional university into a world player in disease research, and its staff understand that they are part of a vital bulwark. "Hong Kong is a very strategic place to be for emerging-infectious-disease work," says Yuen. And when the next would-be superbug pops up, at least scientists will have one more arrow in their quiver.
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The World Bank has tremendous power and reach in determining living conditions for billions of people around the world—including the 1 billion who live on less than a dollar a day. But the process for choosing a leader for the institution is secretive and includes only Americans and elite Europeans. Here, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. calls for the "South"—the developing nations of the world—to take matters into their hands and nominate one of their own to lead the World Bank. Even if it's nothing more than a symbolic gesture this time, it's a start.
Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., is the founder & president of the National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition , and a former candidate for president in 1984 and 1988.
The Bush administration in general, and Paul Wolfowitz in particular, would have you believe that 1,500 Americans have died, perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and more than $200 billion has been spent on invading and occupying Iraq, in the name of "democracy."
Funny, then, that Paul Wolfowitz is now being promoted in a secret, opaque, closely held process that freezes out most of the world. Of special note, the selection of the new World Bank head freezes out the 1 billion people who live on less than $1 per day, and the 3 billion who live on less than $2 per day. It freezes out the entire Southern hemisphere, Africa, Asia and South America. In fact, it freezes out everyone who is not a Bush loyalist in the United States, or a nervous European elite.
It is as if fighting world poverty were a ping-pong game between the United States and Europe, a game in which the poorer nations are not even allowed to enter.
But why? Why should the world’s poorest people be excluded from the process of selecting one of the most important leaders who will affect their lives? Why are the nations most controlled by World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies not allowed to nominate—or even participate in any meaningful way—in the selection of new leadership?
Is Nelson Mandela less qualified to run the World Bank than Paul Wolfowitz? Or how about one of the Brazilians behind the Lula government’s innovative proposal to eliminate hunger by taxing international arms sales? Or, since we know that the most direct route to fighting world poverty is to empower and educate poor women, why not a woman from the South to lead the World Bank; say, Arundhati Roy of India, or Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya—two women who actually know something about helping poor people?
These names are not even considered. Only Americans, and even then, only hard-core Bush loyalists, are in the loop. In an entirely secret process, despite his lack of development credentials, and despite the widespread rejection of the idea when the Wolfowitz name was first floated publicly, George W. Bush followed up on his divisive choice of John Bolton for the U.N. with the promotion of leading war hawk Wolfowitz to head the World Bank.
Forget all that talk about reconciliation with Europe and the rest of the world. Bush’s picks were like a thumb in each of the world’s wide-open eyes.
Since Bush makes up his own rules as he goes along, so should we. After all, when George W. Bush meets with Tony Blair, that’s a minority meeting. The United States and the United Kingdom together are only one-sixteenth of the world’s population.
It's time for a new set of international rules. The IMF is not just the property of Europe; and the World Bank can no longer be just a tool of U.S. foreign policy.
"One-dollar, one-vote" is no recipe for democracy.
The South deserves a voice, and a candidate. The South should nominate one of their own this week, even if just to break the stranglehold the United States and European elites have on the process—just to crack the ice a bit.
That nominee should have a program, a "4-D" platform:
Democracy, to open up the World Bank/Monetary Fund systems to the whole world
Development, to move from big energy projects to micro-, women-centered projects, with an emphasis on renewable technologies
Disease-fighting, to battle AIDS and malaria, and the other diseases that ravage the Southern hemisphere
Debt cancellation, to completely eliminate the debts of Africa and Latin America, to bring the "Jubilee" described in the Bible to the world’s poorest people.
Providing 100 percent debt cancellation with no conditions, no tricks, no limitations and no restrictions is the single most useful step we could take to fight world poverty.
We must challenge the process, right now, by acting as if the Southern nations matter. Nominate a Southerner. Practice democracy. Cancel the debt. Wipe the slate clean, and let's start over.
Three billion poor people are waiting.
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Sunday, February 5, 2012
He will make his way up in an adapted weather balloon. The 400 ft wide scientific balloon will carry a pressurized capsule, with him in it. At 120,000 ft up 23 miles up, he will have to endure temperatures as low as -94 F as well as lack of oxygen and an air pressure that would make his blood boil. To protect him from these difficulties, a suit has been specially designed. The custom suit is also pressurized in a very similar way to the ones NASA astronauts use and carries a supply of 20 minutes of oxygen. His helmet was also specially designed to try and keep him from blacking out when he causes a sonic boom passing through the sound barrier. Due to the difficulties of reaching his parachute's cords whilst in the suit, it also had to be adapted to make the jump possible.
Once he jumps out of the capsule, and away from the balloon, it should take him ten minutes to reach the ground. Thirty-five seconds later he'll break the sound barrier. He'll be traveling close to 700 miles an hour, for the first five minutes, until he reaches 5,000 ft and opens his chute. Five minutes later he hopes to have reached the ground safely, hoping to land in a specific area of New Mexico, but even a slight breeze could cause him to drift 150 miles.
During his jumping blacking will be his worst fear, it would very easily prove deadly. Breaking the sound barrier, the sheer force of the fall, or going into a spin could cause it to happen. Baumgartner stated during an interview that, "I always feel the danger because you might always be subject to an unexpected or emergency event. One single mistake might cause a real catastrophe. You are worried about being where humans shouldn't be."
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The Republic of Kosovo is a country in the Balkans in southeastern Europe.
Kosovo declared itself independent in February 2008. Previously, it was an autonomous province of Serbia, located in southern Serbia.
Because of conflict between ethnic Albanians, who make up the majority of the people in Kosovo, and ethnic Serbians, the region was administered by the UN beginning in 1999.
As of 2011, many countries, including Serbia, still do not recognize Kosovo's independence.
Kosovo is 4,212 square miles (10,908 square kilometers) in area.
It is mostly mountainous, particularly along the borders in the west and south.
Poljes are prominent geographical features in Kosovo.
A polje is a depression that is several miles across. It has broad, flat floors and is surrounded by steep, limestone walls
Poljes form when rain and underground water dissolved limestone along large vertical cracks.
2,153,139 people live in Kosovo.
92% are ethnic Albanians and 4% are Serbs. There are also Gorani, Bosniaks, Turkish and Roma.
The capital of Kosovo is Pristina.
Kosovo has a parliamentary system of government.
The official currency is the Euro.
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Thailand's Elephant "Crushing" Ritual
It's a sound not easily forgotten. Just before dawn in the remote highlands of northern Thailand, west of the village Mae Jaem, a four-year-old elephant bellows as seven village men stab nails into her ears and feet. She is tied up and immobilized in a small, wooden cage. Her cries are the only sounds to interrupt the otherwise quiet countryside.
The cage is called a "training crush." It's the centerpiece of a centuries-old ritual in northern Thailand designed to domesticate young elephants. In addition to beatings, handlers use sleep-deprivation, hunger, and thirst to "break" the elephants' spirit and make them submissive to their owners.
"The people believe that to control the animal they have to do something to make the elephant feel fear and pain," said Sangduen "Lek" Chailert, a well-known Chiang-Mai-based activist who runs Jumbo Express, a program bringing free veterinary care to these animals. She's an outspoken critic of the crush.
Video at PETA: Torture in Thailand
What can you do ?
Please support Elephant Nature Park - Northern Thailand's conservation project for visitors.
. Remember that even a small donation can go a long way in Thailand.
Elephant Heaven is a sanctuary for abused elephants run by Lek Chailert, a well-known Chiang Mai-based activist who campaigns on their behalf. Her exposure of the brutal crush and her conservation campaign has raised international awareness and also provoked local resistance.
More about Elephant Heaven : Reporter's Notebook: Elephants Heal at Thai "Heaven" http://www.time.com/time/asia/2005/h...n_chailert.htm
Do not support, in any way, elephant camps where elephants do "tricks" or may have been subjected to cruelty. Please forward this message to animal lovers around the world.
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The Eole Water Wind Turbine, invented by Marc Parent, has developed a way to utilize the heavy winds in the desert to harness water-making abilities. The turbine condenses water from the winds and collects it for sanitation and refinement.
Originally stumbling upon this idea while living in the Caribbean, Parent realized that his air conditioner was storing water and marvelled at the capability of a system where this had an actual objective.
A current prototype has been up and functioning since October in Abu Dhabi, and has reportedly collected between 500 and 800 litres of water a day. Since pulling in more investors, Eole Water is expected to produce more of these super-powered water manufacturers to be scattered around isolated and rural areas with limited access to water.
919 clicks in 54 w
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Kindergarten Puzzle Games:
K (5-6 yrs)
Alphabet Crossword is a simple puzzle and vocabulary exercise for preschoolers. The game progresses from A to Z, teaching the child some common words associated with each alphabet. Kids have to fill the crossword puzzle by clicking and dropping the words in the corresponding blank spaces. Through this puzzle game, kids will build and expand their vocabulary as they learn new words, their spellings and their pronunciations.
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In this kitchen, trash is treated with respect.
Melanie Peterson-Nafziger carefully cleans up, putting a milk jug in one bin, the cap for the jug in another. Paper goes into a recycling bin.
She slips a wine cork into the cork-recycling bowl. She carries food scraps outside to her compost pile. Egg cartons go back to the man who sells her eggs.
Her nonrecycled garbage? It fills half a shoebox. For the week. For a family of four.
"It all makes such perfect sense to me," said Peterson-Nafziger, of St. Paul, sliding a battery-recycling bowl back into a cabinet.
But is Minnesota ready to follow her example?
The future of recycling is at stake. After surging ahead in the 1980s, Minnesota's recycling rate has stagnated for
Green advocates hope to recharge the movement by centralized recycling of food scraps.
They say organics recycling will sweep Minnesota, just as recycling of aluminum, glass and paper has. They say that eventually Minnesotans will automatically sort out their leftovers, knowing they will be made into Earth-friendly compost.
But composting your lunch isn't like recycling a pop can.
Early tests of potential interest are mixed. Even some avid recyclers balk at recycling table scraps, which can bring smells and insects to their kitchens.
And the environmental benefits are debatable. Skeptics don't think curbside food-scrap collection
"If it does not save money and doesn't do much for the environment, why are we doing it?" said Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center in Virginia and a former assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
"We are not exactly running out of mulch in this country."
43 PERCENT AND FLAT
For the past 15 years, Minnesota has recycled about 43 percent of its solid waste each year -- and that rate has remained flat.
That's well above the national average of about 34 percent. "Minnesotans are really good recyclers," said Maggie Mattacola, communications director of the Recycling Association of Minnesota.
But recycling advocates are discouraged to see no progress, despite decades of promotion.
"The entire state has experienced a stagnation of performance," said the Metropolitan Solid Waste Management Policy Plan 2010-30, written by the state Pollution Control Agency.
The stall in recycling is partly due to the economic slowdown, which has reduced trash and recyclables. And the weight of recycled materials is falling because of smaller newspapers, skinnier catalogs and thinner aluminum cans.
But recycling might have hit a ceiling.
"A large amount of people, through laziness or just not caring, are just not going to recycle," said Jim Wollschlager, spokesman for Randy's Environmental Services, a west metro recycling business.
Recycling advocates have wondered what, if anything, can be done to increase recycling rates. "We have tried educational campaigns," Mattacola said.
FOOD IS NEXT
Their solution? Organics recycling.
America's food waste put into landfills in 2010 was about 14 percent of the total waste generated, according to the EPA. The country recycles a mere 3 percent of its food waste.
Minnesota has decided to change that.
The state PCA has set a metro-area goal of reducing the annual flow into landfills by 75 percent by 2030, said
Of that 75 percent reduction, between 9 percent and 16 percent must come from recycling organic material, he said. The rest would come from expanding conventional recycling and other programs.
Food scraps will become the third wave of recycling.
The first was in the 1980s and 1990s, when recycling services spread across the state. The next wave, spreading gradually today, is no-sort recycling. This allows homeowners to put all recyclables into one bin -- which is more expensive but boosts recycling rates.
The third wave -- organics recycling -- has already started in a group of communities around Wayzata and some neighborhoods in Minneapolis.
St. Paul could be next. The nonprofit Eureka Recycling is proposing to start no-sort recycling and organics recycling in the city, adding $23 a year to the $37 every household now pays for recycling. The city council is expected to vote on the plans next year.
Every household would pay for the service, whether it uses it or not.
In that way, the program would reflect a social value, said Eureka spokeswoman Dianna Kennedy. She compared it to libraries -- paid for by all taxpayers if not necessarily used by all.
"I see it as another quality-of-life investment we make," she said. "I have thousands in St. Paul who want composting."
Eureka Chief Executive Tim Brownell said pilot programs in 2001 and 2010 concluded that 55 percent to 60 percent of households would participate in an expanded recycling service.
But others say centralized organics recycling will wither like a composted apple core.
Only 13 percent of households participated in an organics recycling pilot project recently run by Allied Waste Services, which handles garbage and recycling in much of the metro area. Allied test-marketed 200 homes in the metro area, educated homeowners and provided separate green bins.
But the 13 percent was greater participation than what was seen for a Eureka program in the Macalaster-Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul. There, subscribers pay $40 a year to bring food waste to a centralized pick-up site. In a neighborhood of about 8,000, about 150 are participating.
Tenley Johnson lives in the neighborhood. She recalled the rotten smells and insects in her kitchen when she participated in a trial run.
"A lot of people would try to do it," said Johnson, who now composts in her back yard. "But we have to make it cleaner and more efficient."
Participation rates could be raised if residents were convinced the programs help the environment. But the green benefits are as slippery as a half-recycled banana peel.
Every commercial organics recycling truck in the metro area must drive to a composting plant in Empire Township -- 26 miles south of downtown St. Paul.
That costs money, increases traffic and contributes to air pollution.
Closer substations would help, said Eureka's Kennedy.
"For us to drive trucks to Empire Township is wildly expensive," she said.
Advocates say composting reduces the need for landfills. But the PCA says landfills are in no danger of filling up and more could be built if they do.
Composting prevents the formation of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas created when organics are thrown into landfills.
But the EPA says landfills -- such as the four that serve the metro area -- capture an average of 75 percent of methane. All of the metro landfills use methane to generate electricity.
Despite that, Mark Rust, supervisor of the sustainable-material management unit of the state PCA, said that compost has value as a water-retaining soil additive that reduces pollution. But that doesn't mean it has much monetary value.
Aluminum is recycled into aluminum cans; and paper into other paper products. But food scraps can be turned only into compost, which often sells for less than topsoil -- making it literally dirt-cheap.
Scott Nutzmann doesn't see the point of centralized composting. He owns the Clo-Spin Cleaners only three doors away from recycling super-star Peterson-Nafziger, yet his attitude is worlds apart.
"Why should you compost leftovers?" said Nutzmann, as he folded a pair of pants. "You throw it in the dump and it eventually becomes dirt again anyway."
BETTER IN THE BACK YARD?
Centralized composting programs face competition from Mother Nature herself.
Unlike recycling of aluminum and glass, composting happens naturally when organic material is left outdoors. So backyard composting has the same benefits as a city-sponsored program, without running expensive, air-polluting trucks.
That's good for the environment, but bad for business.
Many hauling companies are paid by the ton to remove trash and recyclables. To them, a backyard composter is a missing customer, the same as someone who doesn't recycle at all.
Eureka says it avoids this quandary by being a nonprofit. If its organics service is paid for by everyone in St. Paul, Eureka won't be hurt by competition, so it could -- and will -- encourage backyard recycling.
But the program will need to appeal to enough voters to get city council support. And many resent being forced to pay for a service they won't use.
"The idea of the government grabbing this drives me up a wall," said Erik Knutson, as he sold a six-pack of beer in Scott's Liquor Store in the same St. Paul neighborhood.
Knutson composts in his yard in Little Canada -- which works just fine, thank you. "Where are they going to take it that's any better?" he asked.
And another potential competitor? A food-to-hogs program run out of Anoka County.
It collects food waste from businesses and schools and uses it to feed thousands of hogs. The hogs are fed about 23,000 tons of food scraps each year, which could be composted.
In all, Allied Waste spokesman Rich Hirstein doesn't see much potential for organics recycling programs.
"You do not even have half the people recycling now," Hirstein said. He said it isn't realistic to assume that a majority will go along with the more-difficult recycling of food scraps.
It's not worth the money, said Porter of the Waste Policy Center.
The current national recycling rate of about one-third is "not a bad number," he said. "But to get to 70 or 90 percent, that is not cost-effective and not good for the environment."
"It is not bad to have things resting peacefully in landfills. A piece of plastic in a landfill is not going to hurt anyone."
There is one indisputable benefit of recycling -- jobs.
Recycling now employs about 36,000 people statewide, said Mattacola of the Recycling Association.
It pays $2 billion in salaries, part of the $8.5 billion in economic activity that recycling adds to the state's economy, according to Rust of the PCA.
To pay for recycling, the state charges businesses a 17 percent tax on garbage bills, and 9 percent for residents. Counties add their own surcharges -- such as Ramsey County's 53 percent for businesses and 28 percent for residents.
And adding organics to the mix could boost recycling's economic impact.
The value of recycled materials is multiplied, said Rust, because of the money required to collect them, sort them, and use them to manufacture new products.
Dump food scraps in a landfill, and they never generate revenue again.
"If you throw it away in garbage, you are throwing away money and jobs," said Wayne Gjerde, recycling market development coordinator for the PCA.
People had to learn to love conventional recycling, and they will do the same with organics recycling, predicted Ramsey County's Hansen.
"People will look at what they throw away not as waste, but as a resource," said Hansen. "They will say, 'This banana peel -- this is a resource.' "
But recyclers don't always think about the money. They share a zeal that is almost spiritual -- celebrating connections with the planet, ties with the community and harmony with what is eaten, discarded or reused.
"I love the idea that I can spread this beautiful compost on my garden," said Peterson-Nafziger, as she dumped a few rinds on her compost heap.
She knows her neighbors don't share her delight in her compost, which to them looks a lot like dirt. But they will learn as the next wave hits, she said.
"We see the economy and the environment and people's lifestyles," she said, "and right now they are all colliding."
Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433. Follow him at twitter.com/BshawPP.
Is landfill space really that scarce?
To the list of things Minnesota has plenty of -- lakes, walleyes, therapy clinics -- we can now add landfills.
"To say we are literally running out of space, and that we don't have land for landfills -- that is an old notion, more of a myth," said Mark Rust, supervisor of the sustainable-material management unit of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
The status of landfills is important because a key argument supporting organics recycling is that it reduces the need for scarce landfill space.
Rust said that at the current landfill demand of 917,000 tons a year, the metro area has 10 to 20 years of capacity left.
The end date could change according to how much people recycle in the future, market demand for recyclables, changes in permits for landfills and other factors.
But when the current sites are full, new ones can be built, Rust said.
There might be local resistance, but Rust is confident that land will be available.
Four landfills serve the metro area: Spruce Ridge Landfill near Glencoe, Pine Bend Landfill in Inver Grove Heights, Burnsville Landfill and Elk River Landfill.
All have liners to prevent seepage of pollution into groundwater. All capture the greenhouse gas methane and use it to generate electricity.
The shortage of landfill space nationally is often exaggerated, said Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center in Virginia.
Across the country, there are some landfill shortages in areas such as New York City and New Jersey. But most cities have plenty of room. Denver, for example, has 50 to 100 years of capacity in existing landfills.
In one often-cited hypothetical, the nation's waste for the next 1,000 years could be placed in a single landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles on each side -- a fraction of the space available nationwide.
Recycling of food scraps would certainly extend the life of landfills. But another way to do that would be to expand existing recycling programs.
That would reclaim part of the $285 million in recyclable material thrown away in Minnesota last year -- which cost about $200 million in hauling expenses, according to Rust.
-- Bob Shaw
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A high-fat diet appears to make you dumber, but exercise makes you smarter. At least if you're a rat.
That's what researchers at the University of Minnesota and the VA Medical Center found, according to studies presented in October in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
In one experiment, researchers housed 30 rats in containers that had two compartments, which the rat could freely go between. Ten of the rats were allowed to use a running wheel whenever they wanted. Ten were put on a treadmill for 45 minutes a day, five days a week. And 10 rats were sedentary.
The rats were trained with 30 trials in which a light went on and a tone sounded that would be followed five seconds later by a mild shock to the rat's feet. The shock lasted five seconds. But the rats could escape the shock by crossing over to the other compartment.
The result: After five weeks of exercise, the rats on the running wheels or the treadmills were more likely to figure out that they could escape the shock by running over to the other compartment. And they were more likely and quicker to get to the safe side before the shock began.
The sedentary rats were more likely to just to sit there and endure the shock.
Another finding: The farther members of the exercising rat team ran, the better they were at avoiding the shocks. One particularly high-performing rat voluntarily clocked nearly 40 kilometers, or close to 25 miles, on the running wheel during
"Rats, they love running wheels," said Vijayakumar Mavanji, a researcher with the VA and the U of M Department of Food Science and Nutrition. The research team also included ChuanFeng Wang, Catherine Kotz and Charles Billington.
Another experiment by the group tested the effect of a high-fat diet on 17 rats. For four months, 10 rats were fed a normal diet and seven were fed a high-fat diet -- food containing 45 percent saturated fats.
Then about half the rats in each group were given access to a running wheel, while half were allowed to remain sedentary. For the next seven weeks they were given the foot-shock test.
The result: The rats on the high-fat diets did worse than the others in avoiding the foot shocks.
But after hitting the running wheel for seven weeks, the high-fat rats wised up and did about as well as those on a standard diet in figuring out how to avoid the shocks.
According to Mavanji, high-fat diets may impair memory formation and retention, by leading to fatty acids getting into a part of the brain called the hippocampus.
But for the rats, exercise appears to reverse that cognitive decline.
Maybe the exercise increases the size of the hippocampus, as studies on humans have shown. Or maybe the rat workouts are leading to biochemical changes in the brain or the formation of new neurons or synapses that offset the impact of the fatty diet.
Mavanji said the data are still preliminary. He said researchers still need to find out if it's actually the exercise that helps the rats' brains or if it's a byproduct of the treadmill workouts, like lower body weight or the lower food consumption that was seen in the running rats.
Humans shouldn't see the findings as permission to eat fatty foods thinking they can offset any effect on their brains by exercising, Mavanji said.
"We won't suggest anyone should eat high-fat food," he said.
Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560. Follow him at twitter.com/RRChin.
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Lauretta Underwood, 72, said she can clearly remember the day her mother told her she was about to witness history as she was dropped off at school.
Following the landmark Supreme Court case Brown V. Board of Education, which made school segregation unconstitutional, Central High School and the state of Arkansas became a national symbol of integration resistance, according to the Arkansas Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.
The school board complied with the law and adopted a plan to integrate, beginning at the high school level and working down to the lower grades starting in 1957, according to the website.
On Sept. 2, 1957, nine African American students who volunteered to attend Central High School were stopped by the Arkansas National Guard under the direction of Gov. Orval Faubus, who asserted the students’ entrance to the school would cause violence, the website states.
President Dwight Eisenhower brought in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to ensure the students were allowed to attend the school on Sept. 25.
Mrs. Underwood said mobs of people, many of whom were mothers, were protesting and the soldiers formed a perimeter around the school, but she was not afraid as she entered.
“In a way, you felt safe because you knew they were there to keep things under control, and there were tanks and trucks everything — it was like a warzone,” she said.
She said, before the airborne division came in, students flocked to the windows as an innocent black man was beaten and dragged down the street by a mob. From her vantage point, she wasn’t exactly sure who stopped the violence, but it appeared the National Guard wasn’t doing much.
“Best I can remember, he was just an innocent guy walking down the street, and there was a mob, and they were going to take it out on him,” she said.
“The people that were protesting the most were the mothers,” she said. “The fathers were at work. (It was) not all of them, a minority were … protesting.”
Some mothers picked up their children from school that first day if they had a class with an African American student, and one of them addressed Earnest Green while he was in study hall, she said.
“Most of the mothers who came to get their kids were quiet and respectful, but one (that) came to the door when I was in study hall was not,” she said. “I won’t (repeat) what she said, but it’s still in my memory. He just put his head on his desk — never said a word.”
Mrs. Underwood said study hall was the only class she had with Earnest, and speaking was not allowed in the class. She said, although they were never friends, she considered him to be very nice, polite and intelligent.
The two also shared a lunch period and after the resistance that day, Earnest ate lunch by himself.
“Part of me wanted to get up and join him,” she said. “I knew that was the right and Christian thing to do, however, I did not have the courage to do so, and no one else at my table would go with me.”
Mrs. Underwood said after a few days, a group of boys found the courage to sit with Earnest and he gradually made friends at the school.
Despite the initial resistance, most students did not go out of their way to make the nine student’s lives difficult, she said.
“Most of the kids were pleasant to the nine, or at least ignored them, but there were some who were cruel and harassed them constantly,” she said. “They were the minority. The majority were either nice to them or left them alone.”
Mrs. Underwood said the ceremony was held outside in the school’s stadium and Earnest was booed and jeered at as he walked across the stage during rehearsal.
A strong police presence was at the actual ceremony, and Mrs. Underwood said she became anxious as Earnest’s name was called out.
“I didn’t want them to do that to him,” she said. “He was such a nice guy, so when he called his name, I was holding my breath. There wasn’t one sound, one jeer, one boo one anything — it was just quiet.”
Looking back on the historical year, Mrs. Underwood said she had one regret.
“I know as a Christian I felt really bad for not befriending Earnest, but I’m happy to see hearts have melted and race relations have improved,” she said. “I pray they will continue to get better.”
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Start Your Visit WithHistorical Timelines
General Interest Maps
Fidel Castro was a young Cuban lawyer when he decided to begin an armed struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1953. He failed at the time and was nearly killed, but lived to lead a second and successful rebellion. Those who hoped that Castro would become a democratic reformer, however, were disappointed when he instead became the hemisphere's longest-serving dictator.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926, near Mayari, Cuba. His parents owned a sugarcane plantation and the family lived moderately prosperous lives. He attended Catholic schools and enrolled in the University of Havana in 1945, where he studied law. At the university, Castro joined groups opposed to the government. He received his law degree in 1950 and planned to run for a seat in the legislature, but his plans were frustrated when Batista overthrew the government and stopped the elections.
Castro charged Batista with violating the constitution, but his case was refused by the court. With political action impossible, Castro switched to violent opposition. On July 26, 1953, he led a group of armed rebels in an attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago. They were defeated by the army, which murdered dozens of the captured rebels in reprisal. Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Following two years in prison, Castro was released by Batista as a gesture of reconciliation. Not at all reconciled, Castro left for Mexico to train a fresh rebel army. On December 2, 1956, they returned by boat. The army confronted them and they were defeated again, but this time Castro escaped into the mountains with a handful of supporters. From the mountains, they began to amass an army of more than 800 men and employed guerrilla military tactics that Bastista’s men were unequipped to handle. They began to win support among peasants, students, and even Catholic priests, from an additional propaganda campaign.
By the end of 1958, Castro had made Batista's position untenable. On the morning of January 1, 1959, the dictator left Cuba for the Dominican Republic, and from there to Madeira Island in Portugal, where he died. Castro entered Havana in triumph on January 8 to begin his more than 40-year rule. He promised to maintain the democratic constitution of 1940, but quickly imposed authoritarian socialist rule. Thousands of Batista supporters were executed, foreign holdings were confiscated, and American companies lost over a billion dollars in assets. On January 31, 1961, the United States imposed an economic embargo on Cuba. As a result, Cuba became more dependent on Soviet and Eastern bloc nations for economic aid. Many Cubans fled the island for the United States and some established an anti-Castro organization in Miami, Florida.
Stirrings of Castro’s overthrow began publicly when American presidential candidate John F. Kennedy criticized then president Dwight D. Eisenhower, during the 1960 presidential campaign, for not doing more about Castro. Kennedy decided early in his administration that Castro needed to be ousted, by force if necessary. He inherited a CIA plan for the Bay of Pigs Invasion from the Eisenhower administration and followed through on the covert attack in April 1961. Castro's military defeated the Cuban exiles and humiliated the United States. The United States got a measure of revenge the following year when they forced U.S.S.R. general secretary Nikita Khrushchev to withdraw Soviet missiles from Cuba during the October Cuban Missile Crisis.
Castro adopted the attitude that Cuba was "non-aligned" despite its close ties with other communist regimes around the world. He was elected head of Nonaligned Nations Movement and has been a strong voice against American imperialism. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba relied on Soviet subsidies to maintain its economy. With money received from sugar sales and economic aid from the Soviet Union, Castro implemented such social programs as his war on illiteracy and no-cost universal health care. Without their economic support, the Cuban economy has suffered, but Castro has maintained tight control. Castro's regime also has assisted with revolutions in Angola and Ethiopia.
From the American side, the economic embargo seems firmly in place, despite being supported by no other government in the world. The status quo seems likely to remain, at least until Fidel Castro finally passes from the scene.
---- Selected Quotes ----
Quotes by Fidel Castro.
I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.
Letter from prison, 1953
Regarding Human Rights
With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated?
Speech in 1978
Quotes regarding Fidel Castro.
By Jesse Jackson
The most honest, courageous politician I have ever met.
During 1984 visit to Havana
- - - Books You May Like Include: ----
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs.
In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict ove...
The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour M. Hersh.
If the Kennedys are America's royal family, then John F. Kennedy was the nation's crown prince. Magnetic, handsome, and charismatic, his perfectly coi...
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot.
For decades, books about John or Robert Kennedy have woven either a shimmering tale of Camelot gallantry or a tawdry story of runaway ambition and rec...
One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Castro, 1958-1964 by Aleksandr Fursenko.
The Berlin Wall has been rubble for a decade and the memories of the cold war are growing dim. And yet no one is ever likely to forget the Cuban Miss...
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smooth ride to Juneau:
RAP maps wind shear and turbulence at isolated airport
That ubiquitous air travel safety announcement about fastening
seatbelts and placing seats in their upright positions has a special meaning
when it comes to flying into Juneau International Airport. The local wind
shear and turbulence are notorious because the mountains that tightly
encircle the airport produce a complex wind-flow pattern that literally
rattles passengers who travel in and out of Alaskas small capital
Two airplanesa University of Wyoming King Air
and an Alaska Airlines 737-400gather data on RAPs prototype
As the project manager for the FAA-sponsored Juneau Wind Project, Bob
Barron of the Research Applications Program hopes to give travelers a
smoother, safer ride.
Bob and his colleagues are developing a prototype warning system that
issues up-to-the-minute alerts about wind shear and turbulence to air
traffic controllers, airline dispatchers, and pilots. The goal is to warn
pilots in time to prevent injuries to passengers and crew. RAP designed
a similar system thats operating at Hong Kongs Chek Lap Kok
Its great that NCAR can use its scientific and technical
expertise to contribute to society on this day-to-day operational level,
RAPs Bob Barron and Deirdre Garvey.
The RAP team used anemometers and wind profilers to set up the Juneau
warning system. The devices use vector mathematics to create a comprehensive
picture of surrounding winds and to determine the danger these winds pose
to airplanes and passengers.
A wind profiler is an upward-looking radar that can measure turbulence,
wind speed, and wind direction. It gives researchers a profile of horizontal
winds and turbulence at 60-meter (200-foot) increments up to about 2.5
kilometers (1.5 miles). An anemometer also measures wind speed and wind
direction, but its measurements are at a single point near the ground.
The team placed the anemometers and wind profilers at a variety of locations
ranging from the airports runways to the surrounding mountains.
Many sites were chosen for their proximity to flight paths, while others
were placed upstream to monitor incoming air before it reaches the airport.
RAP is working with the Atmospheric Technology Division to locate and
operate the instruments. From 1996 to 1997, ATD collected wind data for
several months to explore wind patterns and ultimately determine the best
locations for the wind profilers in Juneau. ATDs Steve Cohn has
helped ensure the accuracy and proper functioning of the Juneau wind profilers,
analyzing data with RAPs Steve Mueller, Andrew Weekley, Cory Morse,
and Kent Goodrich.
By boat or plane
Despite a population of barely more than 30,000, Juneau has a busy airport.
This is because, unlike Rome, no roads lead to Juneau. The only ways in
or out are by boat or plane. From apples to zucchini, supplies travel
through the airport along with people.
This high volume of traffic, coupled with unusually dangerous winds,
brought Juneau International Airport to the attention of the FAA. The
area has two major airflows: a warm south to southeast wind from the Gulf
of Alaska and a north to northeast wind bringing cold air from the interior.
Under certain wind conditions, the only way to fly out of Juneau is by
making a slow, 180-degree turn just after takeoff while turbulent winds
coming over the mountains buffet the aircraft.
For several years, RAP has worked with the FAA, Alaska Airlines, the
Univeristy of North Dakota, the University of Oklahoma, and the University
of Wyoming to collect data in Juneau. In 1998, 2000, and 2002, RAP and
university staffers traveled to Juneau to collect wind data that have
been used to build and refine the warning system. This past winter, two
airplanes, the University of Wyomings King Air and a larger Alaska
Airlines Boeing 737-400, gathered data to fine-tune the prototype system.
The planes were used to correlate ground-system readings with actual
data from the planes. For further accuracy, the Doppler on Wheelsa
truckborne radar owned jointly by NCAR and the University of Oklahoma
that measures radial wind speedconfirmed the data.
With the cold winter weather and rough traveling conditions in Juneau,
Bob jokes that a lot of people have suffered on the project. But everyone
involved understands that the focus of the new system is safety. Turbulence
is a major concern for the airlines. In one serious incident in Juneau,
a 737 departing the airport fully loaded with passengers encountered a
wind hazard and rolled over more than 90 degrees. Fortunately in this
case, the pilots were able to get the airplane back upright just a few
hundred feet above the ground and complete their departure. The Juneau
warning system is designed to provide alerts that will allow pilots to
avoid these types of hazardous areas.
It will also help airlines save money. Turbulence costs U.S. airlines
an estimated $100 million each year in injuries and operational disruptions
such as delays and rerouting. In Juneau, high winds can last from 2 to
72 hours, and wind information can help airlines adjust their routes and
schedules to optimize usage of the airport.
The warning system features sophisticated technology. The wind
profilers have two computers, explains RAPs Deirdre Garvey.
One is part of the profiler and the other is a Debian Linux computer
running the RAP algorithms. The anemometers and wind profilers transmit
data to a central location at the airport, where final data analysis is
performed. There is also a wind information system in Juneau running a
set of RAP algorithms and sending the data to various remote locations
in Juneau. Despite all this technology, in the end, it is up to the pilot
to decide how to respond to the warnings.
RAP hopes to have the prototype completed and handed over to the FAA
by 2004. The FAA will then modify the system to fit its long-term needs.
In the meantime, RAP staffers will continue to refine the prototype alert
system and check it for accuracy.
Until the warning system is up and running, people will be sure to remember
to pull their seat belts tight on their next trip to Juneau. Bob sighs,
NCAR never seems to send me to a place where the weather is nice.
Before the Juneau project, RAP built a similar warning system at Hong
Kongs Chek Lap Kok Airport (above in an artists illustration),
which is scheduled to be completed as shown in 2040. Without this warning
system, called the Windshear and Turbulence Warning System (WTWS), research
showed that one in 700 flights would encounter severe wind shear and one
in 2,500 would encounter severe turbulence. With the WTWS system installed,
unexpected windshear and turbulence are rarely encountered. The WTWS is
equipped with a suite of wind shear and turbulence detection algorithms.
It processes data from anemometers and a terminal Doppler weather radar.
Also in this issue...
launching instrument collection
Lally wins prestigious ballooning award
special evening with an intimate of the atmosphere
PTO, health benefits, and diversity training
to front page
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THE INSIDE STORY/A MONKEY, A PLAN, A CANAL
George dreams that he and Gnocchi are chasing the germs that are giving him a cold out of his body.
The Inside Story - George doesn't feel so well. He's sneezing and can't taste Chef Pisghetti's sauce. He learns that he has a germ inside that's given him a cold. George wishes he could make the germ go away so he could feel better. Gnocchi curls up with George and they both go to sleep. In his dream, George wakes up inside himself, with Gnocchi at his side. They are facing that pesky germ - the bluesy, singing Toots and his Germettes, who have set up camp inside George. George wants them to leave, but they are having a wonderful time and never want to go! George and Gnocchi chase Toots through George's body (nose, stomach and lungs) in an effort to evict him. Will they succeed? And if so, how? A Monkey, A Plan, A Canal - Oh no! George and Allie find that a dry spell has lowered the water level of Lake Wanasink Lake and one of their fish friends got trapped in a small pond away from it's family! What's a monkey and girl to do? Trying to put the fish in a pail to carry it over doesn't work. George decides to dig a canal between the lake and the little pond. This would work except that the small pond is downhill from the lake and fish can't swim up hill. With some help from Bill, George realizes his canal needs a lock. Even though this is big work for a little monkey, George is up to it! Once George figures out how to build it, will the fish use it and swim back to his family?
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A tree at the centre: The Mapuche-Pewenche, people of the Araucaria
In the Andes of southern Chile, near the border with Argentina, the Araucaria tree is an ecological keystone species. At the same time it plays a central role in the economic, social and spiritual lives of the indigenous inhabitants of the area, who call themselves ‘Mapuche-Pewenche’ - the people of the Araucaria tree.
Summary: The Mapuche nation covers a large area, in parts of both Chile and Argentina. Within this vast area are various sub-regions named according to their location or ecological features, such as Puel Mapu (the eastern lands), Nag Mapu (the land of the plains), or Pewen Mapu (the land of the Pewen tree). The Pewen Tree, or Araucaria (Araucaria araucana), is more commonly known in English as the Monkey Puzzle Tree.
The Mapuche-Pewenche value the pine nut from the Araucaria for its taste, and use it as a staple food. In the autumn and winter, when the wheat or potato stores can run out, the Araucaria pine nut offers food security. The tree also provides the main source of firewood, and the resin is used as medicine to relieve headaches, colds, ulcers, menstrual pains, as well as for healing wounds, broken ligaments or sprained muscles. The Mapuche-Pewenche describe their relationship to the Araucaria forest as analogous to that of 'an extended family' (lobpewen).
The male tree (domopewen) and female tree (wentrupewen) are said to reproduce by criss-crossing their roots underground. Two important spirit beings are said to help the trees reproduce and so the Mapuche-Pewenche provide them with offerings during a ceremony called nguillatun.
The Indigenous Markan-Kura Association developed this project, in consultation with the local communities. In a first phase, an interdisciplinary team of Mapuche, consisting of a teacher, an anthropologist and a forester, are collecting knowledge relating to the Araucaria to enhance teaching material in schools in the Mapuche-Pewenche territory. This is not only to encourage the safeguarding of Mapuche language through bi-lingual education, but also to move beyond a mere translation of western/scientific concepts to presenting Mapuche understandings of their environment in a way that is consistent with their own world-view.
© Photos courtesy of Asociacion Markan Kura, Chile
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The United States recognizes the ongoing reform efforts to build a modern, peaceful, and democratic country and welcomes the opportunity to deepen engagement with the people of Burma and their government.
Since 2003, USAID programs have addressed HIV, artemisinin resistant malaria, and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), but sizable challenges remain. Large gaps in equitable access to quality care in the hands of well-trained and equipped health care providers persist. Burma has achieved a marked decline in under-five mortality in recent years; however, at 62 deaths per 1,000 live births, it has the third highest rate of under-five deaths in the Asia and Pacific region. Of these deaths, 47 percent occur in the neonatal period. Maternal mortality is also high, at over 200 deaths per 100,000 live births. Burma recently signed UNICEF’s A Promise Renewed pledge to accelerate progress on maternal, newborn, and child survival. In addition, Burma has Asia’s highest malaria burden and is designated a high burden TB and multidrug-resistant TB country by WHO. HIV prevalence exceeds 7 percent in most-at-risk populations, and up to 22 percent for people who inject drugs.
USAID is helping to build technical capacity for service delivery and monitoring and evaluation, including collection of surveillance data. Aligned with the Lower Mekong Initiative, USAID is also supporting improved cross-border surveillance, prevention, and treatment for key infectious diseases. Building upon the Child Survival Call to Action, USAID will provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Health and its partners to scale up proven maternal, newborn, and child health interventions throughout Burma. Health system strengthening will be the foundation of USAID’s work. This will include improved health governance, as well as policy and strategy development and implementation. In Fiscal Year 2013, USAID will begin working with in-country partners to lay the groundwork for Burma’s first ever Demographic and Health Survey. USAID will join other stakeholders to promote the availability of accessible and acceptable health care services at township, district, and community levels. Finally, USAID will join other donors in supporting the Three Millennium Development Goals Fund aimed at reducing maternal and child mortality rate and fighting three diseases – HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in the next five years.
IMPROVING MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH
USAID improves maternal and child health through a combined community and facility-based model that addresses family planning services and builds the capacity of auxiliary midwives, skilled birth attendants, and other community-based health care providers. USAID supports policies and interventions that overcome barriers to care, address infections and nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy, increase hygienic practices during delivery, and strengthen post-partum care and counseling. USAID is introducing two public private partnerships: Survive and Thrive and Helping Babies Breathe, which provide evidence-based training and high quality affordable resuscitation devices to birth attendants. The partnerships will also link pediatricians, midwives, and obstetricians from American professional associations to peer associations in Burma to build capacity in service delivery for priority health interventions.
ADDRESSING ARTEMISININ RESISTANT MALARIA
The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in Burma focuses on filling gaps in training and equipping additional providers in malaria case management, including diagnostic testing; monitoring availability of commodities, and providing targeted technical assistance and/or logistics support as needed to support full coverage of malaria interventions. Special attention is paid to support community-level logistics in border areas. PMI has also begun training staff to prepare for a national baseline survey of antimalarial drug quality. USAID recently began procuring long lasting insecticide-treated nets, rapid diagnostic tests, and anti-malaria medication.
RESPONDING TO THE BURDEN OF TUBERCULOSIS
USAID’s support to the National TB Program’s (NTP) to address MDR-TB includes implementation of the national treatment protocol and improved laboratory capacity. USAID addresses TB/HIV co-infection by targeting both HIV and TB patients with testing and diagnostic services. USAID recently funded a nationwide TB prevalence survey that revealed TB prevalence three times the previous estimates. USAID supports control of multi-drug resistant TB through strengthening detection of suspected MDR-TB cases; supporting the roll-out of new diagnostics; and improving the skills of health care workers in prevention, case management and treatment of MDR-TB. USAID’s programs also develop TB communication materials that target communities and encourage screening, testing, and adherence to treatments.
PREVENTION AND SUPPORT FOR HIV/AIDS
Through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), USAID’s program focuses on sexual prevention of HIV, largely though behavior-change communication, condom distribution, and increased access to voluntary HIV testing and counseling. Activities target most-at-risk populations in high prevalence areas, increasing their health-seeking behavior while reducing risk behaviors for HIV. Objectives include scaling up a comprehensive service package that includes prevention, screening and treating sexually transmitted infections, and improving linkages for case management and care and treatment services, including TB screening and treatment for people living with HIV.
ADDRESSING INFLUENZA AND OTHER EMERGING THREATS
Programs in Burma improve surveillance and response capacity for both human and poultry populations. USAID is working with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries to strengthen capacities to monitor and respond to H5N1 avian influenza in human and poultry populations. USAID is supporting laboratory diagnosis, field epidemiology, and operations research on live bird markets in order to decrease risk of disease transmission. With AusAID funding, USAID’s PREVENT project will work to characterize and mitigate behaviors and practices associated with the spillover of diseases from animals to people.
Health Fact Sheet (PDF, 173kb)
Last updated: May 10, 2013
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Data Privacy Day/Month 2013
The U.S. Congress also realized the importance of a day dedicated to data privacy awareness and in 2009 passed resolutions recognizing Jan. 28 as National Data Privacy Day.
Data Privacy Month is an annual effort to empower people to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint, as well as escalate the protection of privacy and data as everyone’s priority. Spend the month helping to ensure your institution/GPLS and community is respecting privacy, safeguarding data, and enabling trust.
The USG Office of Information and ePrivacy will host several events, face-to-face and online.
- academic conferences on topics including national security and data transfers, social networking and information security
Gatewood, USG Chief Information Security Officer, “Privacy Day offers numerous opportunities to elevate consciousness of data privacy issues and encourage others to take action to protect their personal information.”
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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – The sand dunes among which Navajos have eked out austere livings for generations are growing fast and becoming mobile as the climate changes, says U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dr. Margaret Hiza Redsteer, whose interviews with elders and historical research augment her decade-long research on Navajo Nation land.
Redsteer will discuss her work Friday, Oct. 21 at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Miami, as part of a panel on "Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples on the Frontlines."
One third of the Navajo Nation is sand dunes, much of it stabilized to varying degrees by vegetation that holds moisture and provides livestock range. Some of the dunes are very old; others date from the 1950s, when drought and wind mobilized sediment from floods on the Little Colorado River. Now, after severe drought has gripped the region with varying but persistent severity from 1996 to 2011, new dunes are increasing in number and previously inactive dunes are on the move. The new dunes form downwind from rivers and washes, largely from dry, wind-blown river sediment. In the Grand Falls area of the southwest Navajo Nation, dunes have grown 70 percent since 1995 and are moving northeast at a rate of 115 feet per year.
Dune mobility can threaten roads and buildings, as well as the livestock raising vital to the Navajo economy and indispensable to its culture. It is one of many signs of the region’s increased aridity. Redsteer and the USGS Navajo Land Use Planning Project, under license to and in collaboration with the Navajo Nation, are mapping the area’s geology and documenting its changes to help Navajo leaders plan for the challenge.
In addition to using ground-based lidar measurements, meteorological monitoring, GPS and aerial and satellite imaging, Redsteer drew on more than 70 elders living in the southwestern Navajo Nation to record observed changes in land use practices, as well as weather, vegetation, location of water sources and the frequency of wind and dust storms. The interviews helped corroborate USGS science.
"Old men told me that they had seen grass grow in areas where no grass grows now," Redsteer said.
"We have aerial photographic surveys of the study area from 1934 and from 1954, but between those years there were big changes. Our interviewing not only provides another line of evidence, but it also fills in a lot of the data gaps."
Redsteer’s work also points up the vulnerability of indigenous people who live on land she calls "just on the edge of being habitable.
"The annual moisture here has historically been just enough to get by. When there is even a small change, there is a huge effect," she said.
John Leeper, director of the Navajo Water Management Branch of the Navajo Nation in Fort Defiance, Ariz., called Redsteer’s work "critical in understanding the magnitude of the climate challenges facing the Navajo Nation due to sand dune movement and other impacts. If the current trends she identifies continue, much of the Navajo Nation will be severely impacted, and much of the Navajo Nation will become uninhabitable," Leeper said.
"The Navajo Nation is intended to be a permanent homeland for the Navajo people," he said. "However, much of that homeland may be in jeopardy if these trends can not be successfully mitigated. Not only has Margaret’s work identified and documented the current trends, her work also gives us perspective on the steps that can, and must, be taken to reverse many of the most damaging of these trends. Her work will help to ensure that the Navajo people will be able to find their livelihoods here long into the future."
As part of their work, Redsteer and the USGS have conducted pilot studies of mitigations to dune movement, such as placing 2m by 2m PLA sand barriers to stabilize dunes and seeding dune areas to encourage vegetation.
"If we’re going to do research for people’s benefit, we have to try to see what kind of solutions there are," she said.
Redsteer’s research in the Great Falls dune area is described in the USGS fact sheet "Monitoring and Analysis of Sand Dune Movement and Growth on the Navajo Nation," available online at http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2011/3085/fs2011-3085.pdf.
Links and contacts within this release are valid at the time of publication.
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An endangered Sumatran rhino has died at the Cincinnati Zoo, a setback to a program that successfully produced the first calves born in captivity in more than a century.
Emi, a 21-year-old Sumatran rhino that had been at the zoo for 14 years, died Saturday after appearing less energetic for several weeks, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden announced Sunday.
Emi produced three calves at the zoo, including Andalas, born in 2001, the first Sumatran rhino bred and born in captivity since 1889. Emi was the only captive Sumatran rhino bred successfully, said zoo director Thane Maynard.
"Naturally it's always devastating when an animal reaches the end of its life, but certainly one as beloved as she is – it's a big loss," Maynard said.
The zoo said Emi had appeared less energetic and had a diminished appetite since March.
Veterinarians performed a complete physical exam with blood work in early April and found some subtle changes in her liver. She appeared to improve in May but her condition then continued to deteriorate, the zoo said.
The zoo conducted a necropsy Saturday on Emi to try to determine exactly why she died.
Zoo researchers also removed eggs from Emi's body in hope of using them someday to produce a calf through in-vitro fertilization or other means.
"With a species so endangered it's important to save anything that you can," Maynard said.
The zoo has two remaining Sumatran rhinos: Emi's mate, Ipuh, and Suci, a calf that Emi birthed in 2004.
The zoo's breeding program grew out of an international recognition in the early 1980s that the Sumatran rhinos were disappearing at a rapid pace, due to poaching and dwindling rain forest habitat in Malaysia and Indonesia.
But little was known about caring for them, let alone how to successfully breed them.
Zoo researchers directed by Dr. Terri Roth used ultrasound, monitoring of hormone levels, observation and trial-and-error to learn how to breed the animals, the zoo said.
"Our fond hope is that by building on that, Emi certainly won't be last Sumatran rhino to breed in captivity and that the program will grow and continue from here and be one that helps a great deal," Maynard said.
Sumatran rhinos are considered the most endangered of the five living rhino species. Only nine Sumatran rhinos live in captivity worldwide and fewer than 200 animals exist in the wild, in isolated pockets of Sabah, Malaysia and the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. They can live for as long as 40 years.
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The Obama administration will no longer consider state boundaries when determining endangered species protections, a decision that could mean more protection for endangered species over wider areas, officials said Friday.
Under the previous policy, set by the Bush administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could require special protection for a species in one state but not in another, even though the species' habitat exists in both states.
The Bush policy resulted in situations like the case of the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, which has contiguous habitat in Colorado and Wyoming.
The Fish and Wildlife Service in 2008 imposed protections for the mouse in Colorado but not in neighboring Wyoming. The reasoning then was that the mouse, which was listed as a threatened species in 1998, was not as threatened by development in Wyoming as in Colorado.
Environmental groups contend the mouse should be listed in Wyoming as well, and they hope the policy change results in restoring protection for the mouse in Wyoming.
U.S. Interior Department Solicitor Hilary Tompkins this week withdrew a legal opinion issued by her predecessor under President George W. Bush that permitted different levels of protections based on state boundaries. Tompkins cited recent federal court rulings in Montana and Arizona rejecting the policy in cases involving wolves and sage grouse.
"We weren't able to defend it," Susan Linner, supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service's Colorado field office, said Friday.
Jason Rylander, attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, said species don't recognize lines on a map and the Endangered Species Act should ensure the survival of threatened plants and animals across their entire biological range.
"When you have a small ranging species in essentially a similar geographic area, you can't get to recovery if you're if only protecting a portion of that population," Rylander said.
But Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said in a statement that there have to be "logical boundaries defining a species' range and at times a border is appropriate."
Mead said using selected court rulings "as justification for changing all endangered species management protocol is a serious misstep."
Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Diane Katzenberger said Friday that the change means the agency will no longer consider specific portions of a habitat separately from the whole during its analysis of threats to a species.
However, there's a question about what to do with endangered species decisions issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Bush policy.
"It hasn't been replaced by any new guidance," Linner said.
In the case of the jumping mouse, there is an unresolved lawsuit by environmental groups, including Defenders of Wildlife, to overturn the 2008 decision not to protect the mouse in Wyoming.
Linner said it's up to the attorneys for the government and the environmental groups to decide what to do about the lawsuit, given the change in the policy.
Katzenberger said the agency could not comment on active litigation.
Rylander said he hoped the policy change would lead to the Fish and Wildlife Service conceding in the lawsuit and restoring protections for the mouse in Wyoming. He said discussions among parties in the lawsuit are taking place but he declined to reveal details.
The Associated Press
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